Author Zora Neale Hurston lived in St. Augustine in 1942 while she was readying her book, "Dust Tracks on a Road," for publication. A new historic marker stands at 791 West King Street to commemorate her residence during that project. Hurston found St. Augustine the right place for the task, calling our town "a quiet place to sit down and write."
She stayed there from March or April until about Christmas.
She also was scheduled to teach an English course at nearby Florida Normal and Industrial Institute (the now abandoned Florida Memorial College site at the corner of Homes Boulevard and King Street).
Did Zora sit on the porch overlooking King Street and mull over her book manuscript or contemplate the turmoil in the world at the time? After all, a wooden rocker could be purchased for $3.75 in those days.
It was only three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor when Hurston arrived here. Life in our nation and our town was changing and adapting to the threats and the needs of the war. While Hurston worked away on the words for her book, American and Filipino prisoners-of-war were suffering and dying through the Bataan death march in the Philippines. The battle of Midway in the Pacific gave Americans a decisive win over the Japanese Navy. In April the war came close to home when a German submarine sank oil tankers just offshore of Ponte Vedra Beach. A few bodies of sailors from the vessels were found in North River.
Petroleum was badly needed for energy to manufacture weapons and military vehicles as well as for fuel to make them run. In 1942 St. Augustine residents found their gasoline for personal use limited to three gallons per week. To conserve fuel further, the speed limit was lowered to 35 mph. For security, night traffic was prohibited on the coastal highway, much of today's A1A.
Local laws created "dry Sundays." Bars and taverns were prohibited from serving alcohol after they closed at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning. (Today's "last call" is earlier.)
Hurston mounted a war of her own in November with the president of Florida Normal school and with the U.S. War Department. She complained about inadequate living conditions for the Signal Corps that had been established at Florida Normal.
Although she had moved to Daytona Beach by January 1943, she continued her campaign for better treatment.
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