John Redding goes to Sea: a heartrending story of a young man's desire to see the world beyond his small town against his mother’s wishes but with his father’s backing because his father had the same dream once, and how it all comes to an end. His body floats oceanward only after drowning while doing black man's work for a white boss in a Florida storm.
In 1921, Zora Neale Hurston's first story, “John Redding Goes to Sea”, was published in The Stylus, a campus literary society’s magazine.
You can read part of the story at this site, which also sells a book with the story:
http://www.keenzo.com/showproduct.asp?ID=1867370

