Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

by Zora Neale Hurston

Nonetheless, Hemenway wondered why Hurston would risk her career and whether her use of Roche’s work was “an unconscious attempt at academic suicide.” This attempt, Hemenway concludes, “is made because of a lack of respect for the writing one has to do.” If detected and “her scientific integrity destroyed . . . Hurston’s academic career would have been finished.” She would then have been free from Boas’s admonitions and Woodson’s demands, and “the unglamorous labor” of collecting folklore.14 Is it possible, Hemenway speculates further, that footnotes referencing Roche had been included but were lost or otherwise omitted from the “other records” to which the article’s footnote alludes? In any case, Hemenway states that “Hurston’s career needs no absurd apologetics. She never plagiarized again; she became a major folklore collector.”