What do Zora Neale Hurston and Lane Kiffin have in common? Not much.
What do Zora Neale Hurston and Lane Kiffin have in common?
One was a remarkably talented poet, author, anthropologist and activist; the other, a football coach. One was African-American; the other, Caucasian.
One was born in Alabama but moved away as a child. The other presumably will move to Tuscaloosa.
One has been unjustly forgotten. The other?
Not long ago, I got an email from a friend. He wanted to know the identity of the woman being pictured that day on the home page of the search engine Google.
My wife asked the same question. She found the answer by clicking on the picture.
It was Hurston. Google was honoring her on Jan. 7, her 123rd birthday.
I was surprised and pleasantly so. Hurston was a torch of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. She was friends with Langston Hughes and influenced Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ralph Ellison and many others.
Yet today, few people remember her. Moreover, it’s unusual for an artistic female African-American to receive any national recognition.
There is a postage stamp with Hurston’s image on it, and she has been featured in a couple of TV documentaries, but given the body of her work, there hasn’t been much. I hope the Google honor is a start — not only for Hurston but also for all unjustly neglected American achievers.
Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga. One biography says her parents were former slaves. At age 3, she moved with her family to Florida, which she regarded as her home state for the rest of her life.
The Hurstons lived in Eatonville, an all-black community, where her father was elected mayor. He stirred up a scandal by marrying another woman as soon as Hurston’s mother died.
Hurston was sent away to a boarding school in Jacksonville, but her family stopped paying tuition and Hurston was kicked out.
Working as a maid, Hurston saved money and attended a high school in Baltimore. Later she went to Howard University and won a scholarship to Barnard College of Columbia University in New York, where she was the sole African-American student. She earned a B.A. degree in anthropology there in 1928.
It was unusual for a black woman to hold such a lofty degree in the 1920s, but Hurston was an unusually talented person. At Columbia, she worked with the famed anthropologist Franz Boas, as well as with fellow student Margaret Meade.
At the same time, she launched a literary career and soon steamed to the top of the potent brew that was later called the Harlem Renaissance. Over the years, her essays, short stories, poems and novels, including 1937’s superb “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” won critical acclaim.
To my mind, her adventures in folklore were equally compelling. Employed in the 1930s by the WPA, Hurston served as a sort of Ruby Pickens Tartt to Alan Lomax and other folklorists, leading them to raw, country blues singers in Florida.
Moreover, her book, “Mules and Men,” published in 1935 and recounting the lives and beliefs of African-Americans of the Deep South, is a classic in the field of folklore.
In the late 1940s, she lived in Honduras, hoping to find ancient ruins. She returned to the United States, where she was accused falsely in 1948 of molesting a 10-year-old boy. Her innocence was beyond doubt — she was in Honduras when the alleged molestation occurred — but the accusation still clouded her career.
In her later years, she wrote a bit for newspapers and magazines. To make ends meet, she took jobs as a substitute teacher and even worked again as a maid.
Suffering a stroke, she died of hypertensive heart disease in a welfare home in Fort Pierce, Fla., in 1960. She was buried in a grave that went unmarked until 1973, when novelist Alice Walker helped erect a stone in her memory.
Since then — and the success of Walker’s “The Color Purple” — Hurston has become better known. Yet time seems to have bypassed her. Not many people today would recognize her name, much less her face.
That’s not so for Kiffin.
I have been a fan of Alabama football for much of my life, beginning with the Bear Bryant era. I wasn’t around for Harry Gilmer, but I wallowed in the glories of the Trammells, Namaths and Stablers at quarterback. Johnny Musso, Tony Nathan, Shaun Alexander, Bobby Humphrey — all these names and more fired me up.
I suffered when the Tide was down. I was buoyant when the Tide was high.
I absolutely respect our current head football coach, Nick Saban. There isn’t anyone better at what he does. I wouldn’t dare to second-guess him.
Except when it comes to hiring Lane Kiffin, who is 38, as offensive coordinator.
I know that Alabama’s loss of two games in a row is unsettling. Still, I wouldn’t trade those losses for the Tide’s two national championships in a row.
The idea of hiring Kiffin to replace the departing Doug Nussmeier is apparently to give some punch to the Alabama offense. Kiffin is supposed to be an expert on offense — he reportedly will implement an up-tempo version with the Crimson Tide — and he’s also proven to be an excellent recruiter, with players like LenDale White and Steve Smith on his gotcha list.
Also, Kiffin supporters say, he virtually rebuilt the football program at Tennessee.
I may be in the minority and I may change my mind, but I don’t like the hire.
USC did well when he was assistant coach there; it led to a job for Kiffin in the NFL. However, he bombed out after a 5-15 record.
Forced to resign from the Oakland Raiders, Kiffin became head coach at Tennessee. But he abruptly left the Vols in 2009 after a single season as head coach. He compiled a 7-6 record.
He quit Knoxville to become head coach at the University of Southern California in 2010. At USC, his record was 28-15. He was fired last fall after the Trojans lost 62-41 at Arizona State.
Some call him an offensive genius, but I picture him as a petulant, bratty boy. I know him mostly from his brief stay at Tennessee, and I remember how his lower lip stuck out when Alabama edged him here.
Oh, but he revitalized Tennessee football, they’ll say. Given the state of the Tennessee football program lately, that’s a bad joke.
Great recruiter? Maybe. But then there’s the story (one that Kiffin denied but others have confirmed) about Alshon Jeffrey.
At Tennessee, Kiffin reportedly told Jeffrey that “he would end up pumping gas for the rest of his life like all the other players from that state who had gone to South Carolina.” Jeffrey, however, went with the Gamecocks, became a star, went to the pros and was selected for this year’s NFL Pro Bowl.
A lot of decent assistants, former Tide quarterback Freddie Kitchens among them, were mentioned when Nussmeier’s job came open. By contrast, after firing Kiffin, the late Al Davis, principal owner and general manager of the Oakland Raiders, called him a “flat-out liar” and a “disgrace to the organization.”
Besides, hurry-up offenses are Auburn’s style, not the Tide’s.
As I say, I may change my mind. But I’d rather lose with someone else than win with Kiffin.
Ben Windham is retired editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at email@example.com.