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Harlem Renaissance writer Zora Neale Hurston is in vogue NOW, but was
ignored for decades before being re-discovered in the 1970s. This year's
Literary Arts stamp subject opposed school desegregation and was otherwise
politically incorrect for the height of the civil rights movement. By the
time she died in 1960, she was penniless and all but forgotten.


Her works include two important collections of folk tales, an autobiography
and four novels, published in the 1920s, 30s and 40s.


Even at the height of her popularity, though, Hurston was controversial:
White critics praised what they called her authentic renderings of primitive
Negro life, while many black intellectuals scorned what they saw as playing
to stereotypes.


Today she enjoys a renaissance of her own, with plays produced, a new
biography, a collection of her letters...and a new stamp.


I'm Lloyd de Vries.