Zora Neale Hurston

You Don't Know Us Negroes

February 16, 2022

The Stowe Center is pleased to partner once again with our friends at Amistad Center for Art & Culture and The Mark Twain House & Museum to present three illustrious scholars—Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. of Harvard, Dr. Genevieve West of Texas Woman’s University, and UConn’s Dr. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar—on the new essay collection, Zora Neale Hurston: You Don’t Know Us Negroes.

Spanning more than 35 years of work, You Don’t Know Us Negroes is the first comprehensive collection of essays, criticism, and articles by legendary author Zora Neale Hurston, showcasing the evolution of her distinctive style as an archivist and author. Penned against the backdrop of the birth of the HarlemRenaissance, the Montgomery bus boycott, desegregation of the military, and school integration, Hurston’s writing articulates the beauty and authenticity of Black life in her assured and sometimes provocative style.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder, his groundbreaking genealogy and genetics series, Finding Your Roots, is now in its eighth season on PBS. He is joined in conversation by Genevieve West, a scholar of Zora Neale Hurston’s work. She is the author of Zora Neale Hurston and American Literary Culture, and the editor of Hurston’s Harlem Renaissance short stories Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick. Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar will moderate. His research interests include the 20th century United States with a focus in African American history, specifically, black nationalism and social justice movements.

This is a free, virtual event. Advance registration is required.

Location Virtual

Doors Open 6:30 pm

Program 6:30 pm

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Isabella Beecher Hooker

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907)
An ardent member of the woman’s suffrage movement, Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker joined in the cause along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

Isabella was the first child of Lyman Beecher and his second wife, Harriet Porter Beecher.

Isabella began her education at Catharine Beecher’s Hartford Female Seminary and lived with her sister Mary Perkins. In 1841 she married John Hooker, a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. John Hooker was a lawyer and an abolitionist.

In the early 1860s Isabella got involved in the woman’s suffrage movement. Isabella joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony as a member of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She was a founding member of the Connecticut Woman’s Suffrage Association. Isabella’s ideas of equality were influenced by John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty and the Subjection of Women.

In 1871, Isabella organized the annual convention of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association in Washington D.C. and presented her argument before the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate. Her husband, John Hooker, believed in his wife and supported her activities. He helped Isabella draft a bill to the Connecticut Legislature giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. The bill passed in 1877. Isabella annually submitted a bill granting women the right to vote, but it did not pass in her lifetime.