"Treat Me Refined"

"Treat Me Refined". Lift Every Voice. , The House at 3017 Sherman Avenue once was a boardinghouse for Howard University students. In 1923 a determined and talented young woman from the tiny town of Eatonville, Florida, lived here while earning an Associates Degree at Howard. In a short time she would win international acclaim as novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston. , Hungry for culture, Hurston devoured Howard's opportunities. She performed in campus theater, played violin, joined Zeta Phi Bet sorority, and co-founded the student newspaper, which she named The Hill Top. She published her first story in The Stylus, Howard's literary magazine. She attended renowned poet Georgia Douglas Johnson's literary salon, meeting the best-known black writers of the time. To support herself, Hurston waited tables at the exclusive, all-white Cosmos Club and cleaned houses. New York's black literary leaders discovered Hurston, who soon left for Harlem. There she helped spur the New Negro Renaissance, a period of intense cultural productivity and racial uplift. She went on to study ethnography under Franz Boaz at Columbia University and later collected folklore, returning occasionally to DC for professional meetings. In 1943 Howard honored her with a distinguished alumna award. , "What do you think I was doing in Washington all that time if not getting cultured.. Treat me refined" -- Zora Neale Hurston to Langston Hughes, 1931., As you turn right on Kenyon Street ahead, you will pass Chavez-Bruce Preparatory Public Charter School. Built as the Blanche K. Bruce Elementary School, it opened for "colored" students in 1898. Monroe Elementary, at Georgia and Columbia, served white children from 1889 until 1931.Four decades later Bruce and Monroe merged in a new Building at Georgia and Irving.