The village, as Hurston called it, was settled by newly freed slaves in 1887, just four years before she was born. And although some whites and Hispanics live within the town limits, most of the 3,000 residents are black, proud of their town's past and active in planning its future. We can agree to disagree. It's all about being a town. Thanks to the community preservation group, members of the town's 14 churches and others, Eatonville has thriving literacy programs, boys and girls clubs, initiatives to keep students from dropping out, programs to make residents more employable and counseling centers.
Churches also offer after-school programs and midnight basketball games popular with teens.
She moved with her family to Eatonville when she was 18 months old. She only lived there for a long stretch until she was about 13, when her mother died and she was sent away to school in Jacksonville. But she did return there on and off as a child, and later many times as an adult, after attending Howard University and graduating from Barnard College and Columbia University, as well as becoming a writer, anthropologist, folklorist, teacher, librarian and reporter. His church has been torn down, replaced by a modern Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church of glass and concrete on a different piece of property. Little, in fact, about the town is as it was during Hurston's childhood.