Valerie Boyd, "Enter the Negrotarians"
(page 5 of 5)

Meanwhile, Hurston's other creative work was going well: Her play Color Struck was scheduled to be presented by an upstart theater company in Harlem at the end of the year. And in December, Alain Locke reprinted "Spunk" in The New Negro, a book that was roundly hailed as the benchmark anthology of the Harlem Renaissance.

Locke dedicated his volume to "the younger generation," and declared: "Youth speaks, and the voice of the New Negro is heard. What stirs inarticulately in the masses is already vocal upon the lips of the talented few, and the future listens, however the present may shut its ears." While Locke noted that the writers and artists included in the anthology "constitute a new generation not because of years only, but because of a new aesthetic and a new philosophy of life," the term "New Negro," for him, was largely synonymous with youth. Yet several members of "the younger Negro group" were not so young. Although apparently no male writer of the period felt compelled to invent a later birth date, several women did. Zora Hurston, Jessie Fauset, novelist Nella Larsen, and even grande dame Georgia Douglas Johnson all routinely lied about their ages.

On January 7, 1926, Zora quietly marked her thirty-fifth birthday. But since youth was such a valuable commodity in Harlem (and at Barnard, no doubt), she publicly celebrated it as her twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, or twenty-seventh, depending on how she was counting that year.

As if to coincide with her progressing age, Zora's relationship with Meyer was gradually moving toward maturity as 1926 began. Like a peer, Zora inquired about the progress of Meyer's writing. Meyer, in turn, sent Zora a copy of her play Black Souls and asked for her comments—as if Zora were a well-regarded colleague, not an erstwhile "humble and obedient servant."

Shortly after her birthday, Zora interviewed for a Barnard scholarship and in early February, she hastily scribbled the good news on a postcard to Meyer: "I got the scholarship!!!"

Even so, Dean Gildersleeve still harbored reservations about whether Zora was true Barnard material, apparently because she had missed a recent history exam and had run into trouble completing the registration process for her second semester. "I wonder whether we really ought to encourage her to remain in college," Gildersleeve pondered in a letter to Meyer. "Does she get enough out of it to compensate for the difficulty and annoyance of trying to fit in to the administrative machine? We have given her a grant from the scholarship funds, but I feel a little uncertain about her."

Doing well academically was important to Zora, but it wasn't everything. "I felt that I was highly privileged and determined to make the most of it," she later recalled of her time at Barnard. "I did not resolve to be a grind, however, to show the white folks that I had brains. I took it for granted that they knew that. Else, why was I at Barnard?"

Zora was not only at Barnard, she was in New York—in "Harlem City," as she called it. And she discovered much more to do there than coop herself up in Barnard's classrooms. Zora admitted to a friend that she was "just running wild in every direction, trying to see everything at once." She was regularly partying with the New Negroes in Harlem, occasionally going downtown to visit Negrotarians Hurst and Van Vechten, writing short stories and plays, working part-time, and attending to her studies.

Meyer admonished Zora that she would do well to abandon her Harlem-centered dreams and distractions and to focus all her attention instead on the rigors and routine of Barnard. In response to her patron's reprimand, Zora acknowledged her huge blunder in missing her history exam. (Having copied down the wrong time, she showed up for the test four hours late, only to be greeted by a classroom full of strangers.) "Your rebuke is just," she wrote to Meyer. "I have been guilty of gross forgetfulness." Yet Zora was hesitant to part with her tendency toward reverie, offering an impassioned defense of her intrepid imagination that sounded like an answer to every-one—starting with her father—who had ever criticized her for having ambition, and for reveling in it. "I shall try to lay my dreaming aside. Try hard," she promised Meyer. "But, Oh, if you knew my dreams! My vaulting ambition! How I constantly live in fancy in seven league boots, taking mighty strides across the world, but conscious all the time of being a mouse on a treadmill. Madness ensues. I am beside myself with chagrin half of the time; the way to the blue hills is not on tortoise back, it seems to me, but on wings. I haven't the wings, and must ride the tortoise."

Surely, Zora could feel her wings sprouting daily, but she feared she was not growing swiftly enough to accommodate her ballooning spirit. "The eagerness, the burning within, I wonder the actual sparks do not fly so that they be seen by all men. Prometheus on his rock, with his liver being consumed as fast as he grows another, is nothing to my dreams. I dream such wonderfully complete ones, so radiant in astral beauty. I have not the power yet to make them come true. They always die," she confided. "But even as they fade, I have others."

Endnotes

Notes from Page 1

"one of the most amusing people": Carl Van Vechten, in letter to his wife, Fania Marinoff, June 3, 1925, Watson, p. 71.

"the gift": Fannie Hurst, "Zora Neale Hurston: A Personality Sketch," Library Gazette, Yale University, 1961.

Meyer had played a critical role in: Unpublished biographical sketch, part of the Inventory to the Annie Nathan Meyer Papers at the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH.

"Being of use to the Negro": Lewis, pp. 100-101.

Notes from Page 2

of the thirteen thousand or so black people: Lewis, p. 158.

"I am tremendously encouraged": ZNH to Annie Nathan Meyer, May 12, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"It is mighty cold comfort": Ibid.

"Do you think you could get": Virginia C. Gildersleeve to Annie Nathan Meyer, June 9, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

who had secured a publishing contract: Rampersad, pp. 109-10.

Annie Pope Malone: ZNH to Meyer, July 18, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives. Also, Hine and Thompson, p. 204.

"your humble and obedient servant": ZNH to Meyer, July 18, 1925, September 15, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I see white people do things": ZNH to Meyer, June 23, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"if she showed certain scars": Author interview with John Henrik Clarke, May 28, 1997.

"We wear the mask": Excerpt from Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask," 1895. The full poem has been reprinted in various anthologies, including Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Nellie McKay, general editors, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 896.

Notes from Page 3

"I have had some small success": Record of Freshman Interest, Barnard College.

"The Hue and Cry About Howard University": ZNH, "The Hue and Cry About Howard University," The Messenger, September 1925.

"If spirits kin fight"; ZNH, "Spunk," The Complete Stories.

Fannie Hurst wrote to Carl Van Vechten: Brooke Kroeger, Fannie: The Talent for Success of Writer Fannie Hurst (New York: Times Books, 1999), pp. 122-23.

"I am sure she would help": ZNH to Meyer, October 17, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

She owed $117: Gildersleeve to Meyer, October 2, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I still must get": ZNH to Meyer, October 12, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I need money worse": Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), p. 240. Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 1940. Also, Arna Bontemps interview, November 1970. REH Files.

"I have been my own sole support": ZNH to Meyer, October 17, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

Zora had moved into Fannie Hurst's apartment: Kroeger, p. 123. Also, ZNH to Meyer, November 10, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

She told Meyer of a student loan fund: Gildersleeve to Meyer, November 5, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

Notes from Page 4

"I knew getting mad": ZNH to Meyer, November 10, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

With a load of seven classes: Barnard College transcript, Barnard Archives.

"You see": ZNH to Meyer, November 10, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"Perhaps Zora bartered'. Kroeger, p. 123.

Hurst had become: Kroeger, pp. 104, 121-27,187-90.

"blazing zest for life": Fannie Hurst, "Zora Hurston: A Personality Sketch," Library Gazette, Yale University, no. 35, 1961.

Hurst was only five years older than Hurston: Kroeger, p. 126. Fannie Hurst was born in 1885.

"a great artist and globe famous": ZNH, Dust Tracks, p. 197.

"She knows exactly what goes": Ibid.

"a stunning wench": ZNH, "Fannie Hurst by Her Ex-Amanuensis," Saturday Review of Literature October 3, 1937.

"I doubt if any woman on earth": ZNH, Dust Tracks, p. 197.

"Her shorthand was short": Fannie Hurst, "Zora Hurston: A Personality Sketch."

"My idea of Hell": Undated letter to Tracy L'Engle, Tracy L'Engle Angas Papers, University of Florida.

"Though the myth holds otherwise": Kroeger, p. 124.

"The girls at Barnard": ZNH to Meyer, December 13, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"But even if things were different": ZNH to Meyer, December 17, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I feel most colored"; ZNH, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," The World Tomorrow, May 1928.

"I suppose you want to know": ZNH to Constance Sheen, January 5, 1926. ZNH Collection, University of Florida.

"Barnard's sacred black cow": ZNH, Dust Tracks, p. 139.

"Partly because you took me under your shelter": ZNH to Fannie Hurst, March 18, 1926. Fannie Hurst Papers. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

"I do not wish to become Hurstized": ZNH to Meyer, December 13, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

At a December 19 party at Fannie's home: ZNH to Constance Sheen, January 5, 1926. ZNH Collection, University of Florida.

"They are OFTEN insincere": ZNH to Constance Sheen, February 2, 1926. ZNH Collection, University of Florida.

working part-time as a waitress: ZNH to Meyer, December 13, 1925. Also, ZNH to Fannie Hurst, March 18, 1926.

"That was how he": ZNH, "The Emperor Effaces Himself," typescript. ZNH Papers, Yale.

Notes from Page 5

Her play Color Struck was scheduled: ZNH to Meyer, November 10, 1925. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"Youth speaks": Alain Locke, "Negro Youth Speaks," The New Negro (New York; Atheneum, 1974). Originally published in 1925.

all routinely lied about their ages: Cheryl A. Wall, Women of the Harlem Renaissance (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), p. 12.

Meyer, in turn, sent Zora a copy: ZNH to Meyer, January 15, 1926. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I got the scholarship!!!": ZNH to Meyer, postmarked February 5, 1926. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I wonder whether": Virginia Gildersleeve to Annie Nathan Meyer, February 9, 1926. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.

"I felt that I was highly privileged": ZNH, Dust Tracks, p. 140.

"just running wild": ZNH to Constance Sheen, February 2, 1926. ZNH Collection, University of Florida.

"Your rebuke is just": ZNH to Meyer, undated [January 1926]. Annie Nathan Meyer Papers, American Jewish Archives.