The Road That Ran Down The Center Of Eatonville - 2025 Words

The main road that ran down the center of Eatonville was a major transit route for people traveling to and from Orlando and Maitland. This route gave Hurston the opportunity to sit in her yard and watch the â€Å"white folks† drive by. There was definitely racial turmoil and segregation in the Central Florida due to Jim Crow laws at the time, however Eatonville was able shield white oppression, to an extent (Tiffany, 36). Her father, John Hurston, was a jack-of-trades having worked as a carpenter, farmer, pastor and even mayor of Eatonville for three terms. Hurston would write in her autobiography, Dusk tracks on the road, â€Å"John Hurston, in his late twenties, had left Macon County, Alabama, because the ordeal of share cropping on a southern†¦show more content†¦Hurston was the second girl in the family and the fifth child out of eight. John worked as a preacher of the Zion Baptist Church in Sanford which is ten miles from Eatonville and was known to spend the weekends up there on his own. John also liked attention from women and was well known to sleep around while married to Lucy. It caused many arguments and brawls in the Hurston house, although Hurston would still claim that her parents were madly in love. Perhaps Hurston resented how her father treated her mother, the person whom she idolized and put on a pedestal. Hurston’s life can be divided into a few sections, first being her childhood in Eatonville, From the age of three until thirteen, Hurston spent her time climbing cypress trees down by Lake Lotus, playing and singing with her siblings and the other kids from the community, sitting on the front porch of Joe Clark’s general store listening to the adults tell tall tales (or lies as she would say), and attending her local school house. She had fond memories of her childhood and would often romanticize it. In her book, Mules and Men, She would describe her hometown as a city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools, and no jailhouse. (Hurston, 4). In a way it was her â€Å"Mulberry†, the perfect southern community where everybody knows your name and living was easy. Because Eatonville was