Visit Florida - Worth the Drive 2008 - (Page 49) >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Central 49 it’s arguably the nation’s oldest AfricanAmerican town, and one of only a handful that have survived into the 20th century. Eatonville was founded on August 18, 1887. The following year, 27 African-American men met and unanimously voted to incorporate the hamlet. Today, Eatonville houses about 2,400 people. Visitors find that the spirit of “town as family,” a signature of early African-American towns, is still in full force here. Many travelers visit in January, when the ZORA! Festival (407-647-3307, www.zorafestival.com) honors Zora Neale Hurston, a Harlem Renaissance writer perhaps best known for the 1937 book Their Eyes Were Watching God. Hurston was one of the first American writers to collect and publish tales based on AfricanAmerican and Caribbean folklore. Born in Alabama in 1891, she moved to Eatonville as a toddler and later produced most of her best work here. Her writing, much of it depicting life in an early 20th-century African-American town, has lent Eatonville iconic status. Today, roughly 40,000 people attend the ZORA! Festival, which features live entertainment, lectures on the arts and humanities and panel discussions. The highlight is a weekend street festival featuring traditional African-American arts and crafts and nationally recognized R&B and gospel entertainers. Year ’round, see more AfricanAmerican art at the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts (407-647-3307, www.zorafestival.com/museumhome.html). 2 Day 2: Daytona Beach Traveling northeast of Orlando on I-4, you’ll reach two other cultural institutions: Bethune-Cookman College and the Museum of Arts and Sciences, both in Daytona Beach. The history of Bethune-Cookman (386-481-2000, www.cookman.edu) begins in 1904, when Mary McLeod Bethune opened the Daytona Educational and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls. The TRAILING HERITAGE ACROSS FLORIDA Zora Neale Hurston lived for a short time in South Florida’s Fort Pierce, where the Dust Tracks Heritage Trail now highlights her home, burial place and the former headquarters of The Chronicle, a weekly newspaper written by and for African-Americans, for which Hurston worked as a reporter. http://www.zorafestival.com http://www.zorafestival.com/museum.html http://www.cookman.edu
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