Joe StarksEdit
Joe Starks is a central figure in Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God. A charismatic and ambitious Black man, he arrives in Eatonville, Florida with his wife Janie Crawford and quickly rises to prominence as a merchant and the town’s leader. Starks embodies the energy of early 20th‑century Black self-reliance—a push to build institutions, attract commerce, and project a form of orderly progress. His tenure as mayor and leading citizen of Eatonville, the first incorporated Black town in Florida, makes him a touchstone for discussions about development, authority, and the balance between public order and personal autonomy within a tight-knit community.
Starks’s arc is often read through the lens of economic development and local governance. He arrives with a plan: to modernize Eatonville, to create a visible, working economy, and to establish a sense of dignity and respectability for a town that had faced external skepticism. In Hurston’s narrative he becomes a rapid catalyst for change, opening a store, creating public workplaces, and promoting a sense of civic pride. In doing so, he also asserts a distinctive leadership style—confident, centralized, and focused on results. Readers encounter a leader who believes in the capacity of a community to lift itself by its own efforts, a key theme for a town that relied on the initiative and discipline of its citizens.
Leadership and Development in Eatonville
Economic modernization: Starks positions himself as a force for tangible improvement. The store he runs becomes more than a business; it functions as a social hub and a symbol of the town’s potential. The emphasis on commerce, orderly public space, and reliable services reflects a practical, results-oriented approach that would resonate with readers who prize private enterprise, the rule of law, and predictable governance as the foundations of prosperity Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Social order and gender dynamics: Starks seeks to shape public life around a shared ethic of respectability and order. His leadership style privileges structure, public reputation, and cohesion, which in turn affects domestic life and the expectations placed on Janie Crawford. The arrangement highlights the tension between a community’s need for stability and individuals’ insistence on personal agency. Within this dynamic, Starks’s insistence on a certain form of propriety can be seen as a mechanism to preserve social capital in a small town where reputation matters.
The end of his tenure and legacy: Starks’s time in Eatonville culminates in a profound turning point for both the town and his wife. His death marks not the dissolution of his project, but a transition point—leaving the community to carry forward the infrastructure and institutions he helped establish, while also leaving unresolved questions about balance between leadership, consent, and personal freedom. The long-term effects of his initiatives are debated by readers and scholars as a test case of how pragmatic leadership interacts with cultural traditions in a Black community under pressure from external systems of power.
Controversies and debates
From a perspective that stresses economic vitality, order, and civic achievement, Starks is frequently viewed as a model of pragmatic leadership: a public figure who translates private initiative into communal assets, and who prioritizes tangible progress over romantic slogans. Proponents argue that the town’s ability to organize, its improved infrastructure, and its clearly defined leadership structure helped Eatonville survive and flourish in a difficult era. This reading emphasizes property rights, rule of law, and institutional stability as the core ingredients of advancement for a community that had to manage both internal dynamics and external scrutiny.
Critics—who point to the novel’s more intimate, personal dimensions—argue that Starks embodies a form of patriarchal leadership that limits individual autonomy, especially for women like Janie. They contend that authority exercised through public position can suppress voice and dissent, even when it yields concrete gains for the collective. Those who emphasize these criticisms often frame Starks’s approach as emblematic of older, hierarchical patterns that can be at odds with modern interpretations of gender equality and personal sovereignty.
From a right‑of‑center vantage point, the controversy surrounding Starks is instructive. Critics who dismiss this perspective as reactionary often overlook how the character’s emphasis on economic development and public order can be essential to lifting a community with limited resources. Proponents argue that in a setting where external threats and social fragility could undermine progress, strong, accountable leadership—paired with a clear legal framework and measurable results—can be the most effective means of creating opportunity. In this view, striving for civic stability, predictable governance, and productive enterprise is not incompatible with respect for individual rights; it is the very engine that makes those rights meaningful in practice.
Conversely, proponents of a more critical reading contend that modernization should not come at the expense of personhood or autonomy. They stress that true progress should include robust protections for personal liberty, open debate, and shared authority within households and communities. They may see the push for order as potentially coercive, especially within intimate relationships, and argue that a more pluralistic, participatory approach could have broadened the town’s sense of belonging without sacrificing discipline or prosperity.
Overall, Hurston’s portrayal of Joe Starks invites a nuanced debate about leadership, modernization, and the ways communities pursue dignity and self-determination. It foregrounds questions about how much authority a leader should concentrate, how to balance economic development with cultural autonomy, and how a community can grow while remaining true to its own values.