Under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas (her former Columbia professor) and Harlem Renaissance arts patron Charlotte Osgood Mason, Zora Neale Hurston spent nearly two years, from 1927 to 1929, studying the folkloric customs, work songs, spirituals, and vernacular language of African American communities along the River Road and from New Orleans to Florida.
| Tagline | |
| Release Date: | Jan 08, 1928 |
| Genres: | Documentary |
| Production Company: | |
| Production Countries: | United States of America |
| Casts: | Zora Neale Hurston |
| Status: | Released |
| Budget: | $0 |
| Revenue: | 0 |
Currently identified as "Fieldwork Footage," this 3-minute excerpt shows the Loughman, Florida, logging community in 1928. The first part is filmed from a moving traincar and shows Black workers pulling lumber from the forest and loading it onto the cars. Then we see a shot of the cars moving through town, loaded with lumber. The final 20 seconds shows a streetcar parked in front of what appears to be a house. While Cudjo Lewis (born Oluale Kossola) was not in this specific "fieldwork footage," I feel that it wouldn't be inaccurate to keep him on the credits, as he is in Hurston's other footage that was shot at the time.
