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Zora! Festival celebrates culture, preservation wins for historic Black community

Ellen Degnan

Visitors at SPLC booth at Zora Fest.

Zora! Festival celebrates culture, preservation wins for historic Black community

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Every January for more than a quarter century, the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community (P.E.C.) has called thousands of people together from across the globe to celebrate the extraordinary writer, folklorist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston in the place that raised her, the town of Eatonville, Florida — the first self-governing, all-Black municipality in the United States.  

This year, the theme of the Zora! Outdoor Festival of the Arts and Humanities was place-making from a historical perspective. Over the three days of Zora! Festival, our team had countless conversations about Eatonville’s cultural heritage and its ongoing quest for justice through community land reparations.

My colleagues and I joined the festivities at the invitation of the P.E.C., our client in a campaign urging the School Board of Orange County to return the historic Hungerford School property to the people of Eatonville. The board is no longer proposing to sell the Hungerford School property to a private developer, a promising step forward that followed on the heels of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s lawsuit against the school board. Filed on behalf of the P.E.C. and Hungerford descendant Bea Hatler, it was recently dismissed as moot in light of the canceled sale. 

When festivalgoers approached the SPLC’s Zora! Festival booth, nestled within a showcase of artisanry from across the African diaspora, we asked if they knew of the Hungerford School and its role in Eatonville’s flourishing. We chronicled the school’s founding in 1899 as a private boarding school and refuge for Black children, who were typically excluded from public schooling across the Jim Crow South. We shared how the Eatonville community stewarded the school to become a beacon of self-determination and educational excellence for Black Americans. We tried to convey that, as N.Y. Nathiri, a founding member of the P.E.C. and its executive director, said, “Hungerford School was more than a training ground for life. The school represented Eatonville’s collective wisdom on priorities and how to provide for future generations.” 

We explained, too, how segregation-era courts greenlit a school board takeover of the Hungerford School and its 300-acre property in the 1950s, and how only five years ago the school district demolished the remaining school buildings even though they served as the community’s recreation center and gathering place. Finally, we expressed the P.E.C.’s — and our — belief that the Orange County School Board should embrace the opportunity to right this historical wrong and restore the Hungerford School property to the collective care and stewardship of the Eatonville community.  

Festivalgoers resoundingly agreed. Hundreds of visitors to the SPLC’s booth signed and sent postcards to Orange County School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs calling for the return of the Hungerford School land to community control.  

We join that chorus in urging the school board to rise to the occasion. 

Ellen Degnan is a senior staff attorney with the SPLC’s Economic Justice litigation team.

Image at top: At the SPLC’s booth during the Zora! Festival from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2, 2025, in Eatonville, Florida, visitors learned about the Hungerford School and how it enabled the community to flourish. (Credit: SPLC)

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