Zora Neale Hurston was the first African-American female anthropologist. She rose out of Eatonville, Florida the first incorporated African American town in the United States, to conquer the wider world of the African-Diaspora. Through story, play, religion, film and persona Hurston vivaciously displayed her heritage and culture. Succeeding ultimately on her own terms she left an indelible mark in the history of pioneering scholarship. As a member of the Harlem renaissance she shone as a bright star, a beacon of hope and enduring spirit to inspire us all.
Her written work and even her grave remained undiscovered, until the heroic search by Alice Walker in the 1970s. Much of Hurston’s scholarly work related to the folklore and religion of the Southern U.S. Included in this impressive cannon are a few vital pieces of visual anthropology documenting the practices of the early 20th century.
The earliest film works of Zora Neale Hurston were created during her second folklore collecting trip through the American South. Hurston explained her motivations for undertaking the collecting mission this way , “ I must tell the tales, sing the songs, do the dances and repeat the raucous sayings and doings of the Negro farthest down. “ During this project, which lasted roughly from 1927-1929, she shot several short 16mm films. The surviving collection includes the ten rolls of film she took depicting life in about 10 or more rural Southern locations, ranging from turpentine camps to sacred waterside baptism locales.
Several of these films feature children playing ring games or dancing games. A favorite subject of both Hurston and her anthropological contemporaries, the children provide a wealth of material on ritualized dance and hint at possible adult practices of the time. Probably filmed in Florida, the first of these short pieces seems to be informed by a strictly anthropological methodology. It features a primarily frontal address, a typical shooting strategy for early cinema and a technique employed later for ethnography by Margaret Mead in her Balinese trance footage. The film is pieced together with what appears to be a simple in-camera edit, and the children demonstrate several of their games which include communal jumping and spinning. The short segment concludes with a few cute extreme close up shots taken from a low angle. These feature the children peering directly into the lens. The next short children's segment takes place at a littered waterside locale. The children this time perform a different series of ring and line games, and hold up cards depicting their various ages. Unfortunately, these cards are unreadable in the print. There are instances of finger wagging and the “jook” type dancing that was popular at the time. The “jook” has been described as an African-American pleasure house where dancing consisted of hips that could to quote an early work song , “ shake like jelly all over. “ The children then move on to march off down the water's edge to what the viewer can only imagine was another adventure. The next children's game segment includes material that I feel is vitally important to several disciplines including performance studies, African-American history, and film history. It includes another instance of children's ring dances, taking place in front of what appears to be a schoolhouse. This ring dance seems to be a forerunner of modern break dancing, with one small boy moving into the center to perform flips, turns, and splits to the barefoot stomping of his contemporaries.
The film that is most often referred to as the baptism footage was taken by Zora Neale Hurston in Miami, Florida during the month of August 1929. Miami is still a site of African-American religious retention today through the religion of Santeria. These retentions were vitally important to Hurston and her position on their pervasiveness was dealt with in her essay “The Sanctified Church “in which she states:
"In fact, the Negro has not been Christianized as extensively as is generally believed. The great masses are still standing before their pagan altars and calling old gods by a new name. "
The footage depicts two figures in ritual white clothing, with one adult
officiating, and one child receiving the blessing, along with one assistant. A blessing or sermon is given and the child is dipped backward into the ocean. The ritual use of white clothing and wrapped heads is used in various rituals including a Santeria Rogacion, a Vodou Lave Tet, and a Southern Baptist baptism.
Water was indeed a recurring theme in Hurston's life and work, and her focus on it seems a logical feature for any work on African-American folk beliefs. The baptismal footage, in my opinion, seems to be documentation of Hurston’s strong conviction that African religion was still being practiced in the United States. This footage, I believe based on my own participant observation research in Haitian Vodou, West African Ifa, and Central American Santeria, in conjunction with the location, appears to mark it as an instance of a Santeria rogacion or ritual blessing symbolizing rebirth into the tradition. This makes the short film, one of the earliest, if not the first, visual ethnographic document of these practices in the United States. Hurston herself had just begun her own Hoodoo (the New Orleans form of Voodoo) initiations the previous year. This is another factor which adds an extra privilege to this already valuable material.
Zora Neale Hurston went on to continue to be involved with film in addition to her prolific writing career. In April and May of 1940 she was commissioned to assist Jane Belo, a student of Margaret Mead's at the time, in the filming of African-American culture in the region surrounding Beaufort, South Carolina. Incidentally, Beaufort has long been a site of profound African spiritual retentions. Hurston this time situated herself amidst the cinematic material in an early instance of anthropological self-reflexivity. This South Carolina footage consisted of road scenes, landscapes, farm and prison workers, and the ritual activities of a Baptist church. In the background of the church footage we see one of the traditional Haitian sequin flags of Vodou.
Hurston’s legacy of scholarship survives. Her commitment to archival endeavors documenting the spirit and soul of the diasporic African people will be a valuable resource for future generations.
For More Information about Hurston's work Please check out my book at
www.hometown.aol.com/blackbrigit/index.html
