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Collection Zora Neale Hurston Plays at the Library of Congress

1930 to 1935

Timeline

  1. 1930

    January-February: Does fieldwork in the Bahamas

    In New York City, New Jersey and the South

    Collaborates with Langston Hughes on their play Mule-Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life

    Portrait of Langston Hughes. Gordon Parks, photographer. 1943. Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection. From the Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction #: LC-USW3-033841-C DLC

  2. October 1930

    Registers her revue, Cold Keener, and her own version of the Mule Bone story, De Turkey and de Law, a Comedy in Three Acts, for copyright

  3. January 1931

    Mule-Bone, by Hurston and Hughes, registered for copyright

  4. July 1931

    Registers four sketches, "Forty Yards," "Lawing and Jawing," "Poker!," and "Woofing," for copyright

    Attempts at various Broadway productions

  5. 1932

    Brief New York productions of her play, The Great Day, are a critical success but financial failure.

  6. 1933

    Revises The Great Day and produces it in Florida venues as From Sun to Sun

  7. May 1934

    Novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, published

  8. 1935

    Lives and writes in Florida and New York

  9. June 1935

    Registers three-act play, Spunk, for copyright

    Goes South with Alan Lomax and Mary Barnicle to collect folk music for the Library of Congress

    Joins Harlem unit of Federal Theater Project (WPA)

    Alan Lomax — Authority on American folk-lore [between 1940 and 1945]. From the Prints and Photographs Division. Reproduction #: LC-USZ62-121915

  10. October 1935

    Publishes Mules and Men