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Going down one road I smelt hot rosin and looked and saw a “gum patch.”
That’s a turpentine still to the outsider, but gum path (sic) to those
who work them.
- Zora Hurston
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History
Zora Neale Hurston and her work with the WPA in Florida. |
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Documents
"Turpentine" by Zora Neale Hurston. Description
of Hurston and the trip to Cross City by Stetson Kennedy. |
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Photos
Photographs of Hurston, her home town of Eatonville, and
turpentine workers and camps. |
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Lesson
Plans
For Grades 9-12. Meet Sunshine State Standards for social
studies (SS.A.5.4) and language arts (LA.A.2.4). |
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Zora Neale
Hurston was already a published writer when she began working for the
Florida division of the Work Projects Administration (WPA). Hurston never
mentioned her work with the Federal Writer's Project in her autobiography,
perhaps because of the stigma associated with the WPA's relief programs.
In August
of 1939, Hurston went on a recording expedition to the turpentine camps
in Cross City, Florida.
Documents
relating to this expedition include:
- Zora
Neale Hurston's essay "Turpentine".
- Folklorist
Stetson Kennedy's recollections of working with Hurston and of the trip
to Cross City.
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