Mules and Men was published by J.B. Lippincott in 1935, with a preface by Franz Boas, and is the first collection of African American folklore published by a black American woman. More than that — it is a work of art in its own right, framed by Hurston’s narrative of the collecting process, her return to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, and her initiation into hoodoo practices in New Orleans. It is anthropology transformed by literary genius.
The Book
Hurston organized the material in two parts:
Part One: Folk Tales — collected primarily in Eatonville, Florida, and in lumber camps, turpentine stills, and jook joints across central Florida. These are not sanitized children’s stories but the actual oral literature of working black communities: bawdy, violent, hilarious, philosophical. The tales feature John (the trickster slave who outwits Old Massa), the Devil (a figure of comedy more than terror), and various animals who embody human types.
Hurston frames the tales within the social situations where they were actually told — on store porches, in work camps, at fish fries. She records the competitions between tellers, the audience responses, the social dynamics that determine who speaks and when. This contextual framing was revolutionary for its time: previous folklorists had stripped tales from their settings and presented them as decontextualized texts.
Part Two: Hoodoo — Hurston’s account of her initiation into hoodoo (Voodoo) practices in New Orleans, under multiple practitioners. She underwent genuine initiations — fasting, sleeping with snakes, performing rituals — and records both the practices themselves and the spiritual worldview that sustains them. This section is ethnography as participation, not observation.
Method
Hurston’s training under Franz Boas at Columbia gave her the anthropologist’s tools: systematic collection, attention to context, respect for informants. But her identity as a native of Eatonville — a black woman returning to her own community — gave her something no outside anthropologist could have: access, trust, and an insider’s understanding of when people were performing for a stranger versus speaking naturally.
Her literary gifts transformed the material further. The dialect is rendered with precision and affection — not as comic spectacle (the minstrel tradition) but as a fully expressive language capable of poetry, philosophy, and wit. She lets her informants speak in their own voices, with minimal editorial interpretation.
Significance
Mules and Men preserved a body of oral literature that might otherwise have been lost — the tales, songs, and practices of rural black communities in the early twentieth century, before radio, television, and migration dispersed the communities that sustained them.
It also challenged the prevailing assumption (held by both white scholars and some black intellectuals) that African American folklore was a degraded version of European originals. Hurston demonstrated that black folk culture was a sophisticated, self-sustaining tradition with African roots and American branches — not a deficiency to be overcome but a richness to be celebrated.
Collecting Mules and Men
First edition (J.B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, 1935): Orange cloth binding with black lettering. Dust jacket with folk-art illustrations.
Identification points:
- J.B. Lippincott imprint
- “FIRST EDITION” stated
- Preface by Franz Boas
- Illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias
- 342 pages
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $3,000–$8,000. Hurston’s first editions are among the most sought-after in African American literature, and the jacket’s folk-art design is particularly appealing.
Without jacket: $500–$1,500.
Signed copies: Extremely rare — Hurston died in poverty and obscurity in 1960, and signed copies from the 1930s are nearly nonexistent on the market.
The book’s rediscovery in the 1970s — part of the broader Hurston renaissance led by Alice Walker — transformed it from a forgotten anthropological curiosity into a recognized masterpiece of American literature.