Batgrl (Book Data Kept Elsewhere)’s Reviews > Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings > Status Update

Written in 1943: "From his secret place he is working for all America now. We are all his kinfolks. Just be sure our cause is right, and then you can lean back and say, "John de Conquer would know what to do in a case like this, and then he would finish it off with a laugh." White America, take a laugh out of our black mouths and win! We give you High John de Conquer!"

"They say of that type of preacher, :Why he don't preach at all. He just lectures." And the way they say "lecture" makes it sounds like horse-stealing."

The Ocoee Riot - one of three Florida race riots of the 1920s: "White mobs committed murders, accompanied by wholesale destruction of black houses, churches and schools." In Hurston's account, at Ocoee there was an attempt (and apparent success) to suppress the black vote.

"West Hell is the hottest and toughest part of that warm territory. The most desperate malefactors are the only ones condemned to West Hell... These souls are changed to rubber coffins so that they go bouncing through Regular Hell and on to their destination without having to be carried by attendants as the Devil does not like to send his imps into West Hell oftener than is absolutely necessary."

"Folklore is the arts of the people before they find out that there is any such thing as art, and they make it out of whatever they find at hand."

"Folklore is the boiled-down juice of human living. It does not belong to any special time, place, nor people. No country is so primitive that it has no lore, and no country has yet become so civilized that no folklore is being made within its boundaries."

"There is a lively rivalry in the technical artistry of all of these fields. It is a special honor to be called upon to pray over the covered communion table, for the greatest prayer-artist present is chosen by the pastor for this, a lively something spreads over the church as he kneels, and the "bearing up" hum precedes him."

Spirituals: "The jagged harmony is what makes it, and it ceases to be what it was when this is absent. Neither can any group be trained to reproduce it. The truth dies under training like flowers under hot water. The harmony of the true spiritual is not regular. ...The congregation is bound by no rules. No two times singing is alike, so that we must consider the rendition of a song not as a final thing..."

"The idea that the whole body of spirituals are "sorrow songs" is ridiculous. They cover a wide range of subjects from a peeve at gossipers to Death and Judgement." - that's Hurston, always right up front with her opinions. (Then she goes on to cite examples, because she's good at that too.)