5 Letters

Hurston, the formidable writer and anthropologist whose stories are a standard of college American literature courses, was a close friend of Shirley Kinsey’s uncle, James A. Webster; she discovered these letters among his papers after his death in 1993. Webster befriended many Harlem Renaissance artists and scholars, Hurston included, while he was a student at Columbia University. The two continued their friendship after Webster’s graduation, spending time together in St. Augustine, Florida, where he was a professor at Florida Memorial College. Hurston’s letters to Webster offer glimpses of a prominent public figure’s intimacies and personal moments in a way not usually revealed to us. The Kinseys treasure such synchronicity as it parallels their small acts of collecting writ large in a national and historical context.