Spunk

Study Guide

Deeper Study

Historical Context: Eatonville

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Deeper Study Historical Context: Eatonville

Like much of Zora Neale Hurston’s work, “Spunk” is set in a thinly fictionalized version of her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville, located in Central Florida near Orlando, was an all-Black town that Hurston credited with giving her from an early age a sense of herself as a full citizen, not discriminated against for her Blackness but able to live freely and comfortably among her own people. After leaving Eatonville, she devoted much of her career to recording and celebrating life there, in both literary and anthropological work. The details of the village provided in “Spunk” are factually accurate. The town was physically small, founded in the late-19th century by Black freemen who wished to build a community of their own. Despite legislation meant to enable freed Blacks and poor whites to acquire land after the Civil War, they struggled to find white owners willing to sell to them. Joe Clark, whose store is depicted in this and other stories by Hurston, was a founder, incorporating the town on land purchased and donated by two white landowners, Josiah Eaton and Lewis Lawrence. In addition to stores, churches, and a school, the town included a Black-owned sawmill, the employer for the men of “Spunk.”