Artist Biographies

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On this page we have a timeline of historical contexts organizing our artists biographies.

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This timeline includes only those authors who currently have completed pages on the Voices from the Gaps site. For a full listing of authors, search by name.

before 1600 | 1600-1799 | 1800-1899 | 1900-1945 | 1945-present

Before 1600

25,000 B.C.

Paleo-Indian settlement in New Mexico.

12,000 B.C.

Paleo-Indians settled in all unglaciated areas of North and South America.

9,000 B.C.

Beginnings of agriculture in Mexico.

5,000 B.C.

First cultivation of maize in central Mexico.

3372 B.C.

The earliest date of the Mayan calendar, on which all later Mayan dates are based.

2500 B.C.

Early pottery in Florida and Georgia.

2000 B.C.

Residents of the lower Mississippi Valley cultivate four agricultural crops.
Residents of the Great Lakes region mine copper and hammer it into tools and beads for trade.

700-750

Teotihaucan, Mexico is the sixth largest city in the world.

1300

Native American population in North and Central America is at its peak.
The population of Mexico is over 30 million; of North America is between 12 and 15 million; and of South America is over 20 million.

1492

The Arawaks rescue the crew and cargo of the Santa Maria when it goes aground on a coral reef off the coast of a Caribbean island.

1493

Columbus returns to Spain with two dozen captured Arawaks, declaring that he has found India. The king and queen give him 17 ships, 1,200 colonists, 300 soldiers, and 34 horses and other animals to use for a second expedition.

1495-1496

Disease devastates island populations.

1509-1511

The native populations of the West Indes are decimated by disease, warfare, and slave labor. Tens of thousands die, including the entire Carib population of the Lesser Antilles.

1513

The Calusas of Florida successfully drive Ponce de Leon away.

1517

First expedition to the coast of Mexico.

1519-1521

The Spanish begin destruction of the Aztec empire.

1528

The Timcua of Florida successfully resist 400 Spanish settlers who wish to start a new colony in Tampa Bay.

1531

Guadalupe appears to an Indian acolyte, named Juan Diego by the Spanish, near Mexico City.

1539

Timcua, Appalachia, Coosa, Mobile, Natchez, and Tonkawa begin to fight off the invasion of Hernando De Soto.

1587

North Carolina Indians introduce the English to corn.

1600-1799

1619

The first Africans are brought to North America (Jamestown) as indentured servants.

1763

First recorded settlement of Filipinos in America. They escape imprisonment aboard Spanish galleons by jumping ship in New Orleans and fleeing into the bayous.

1770

Boston Massacre. Crispus Attucks is killed.

1797

Sojourner Truth is born.

1799

Nancy Gardner Prince is born.

1800-1899

1806

Sarah Mapps Douglass is born.

1808

The importing of slaves is made illegal in the U.S.

1828

Harriet E. Adams Wilson is born [approximate]

1831

Nat Turner slave rebellion occurs.

1835

Harriet Jacobs runs away from her abusive master.

1840

First South Asians settle in North America as indentured servants in Trinidad.

1842

Harriet Jacobs escapes to New York.

1845

Hallie Quinn Brown is born.

1849

Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.

1850

Nancy Gardner Prince publishes Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince, one of the first personal narratives of a free black woman in the Antebellum U.S.

1851

Sojourner Truth gives "Ain't I A Woman" speech in Akron, Ohio.

1852

California imposes a Foreign Miner's License Tax, collecting $3 a month from every foreign miner who did not desire (or was prohibited by law) to become a citizen. The purpose of this tax was to reduce the number of Chinese citizens immigrating to California as well as to discourage Chinese men from mining for gold.

1854

Law forbids Chinese people from testifying in court against whites, depriving Chinese of legal protection and subjecting them to repeated acts of violence.
Yung Wing graduates from Yale becoming the first Chinese person to graduate in the United States.

1856

Likely death date of Nancy Gardner Prince.

1857

Dred Scott Decision upholds the rights of slave owners.

1859

Pauline Hopkins is born.
Our Nig, the first novel by an African-American woman -- Harriet E. Adams Wilson -- is published.
Raid at Harper's Ferry takes place.
Exclusion of Chinese from public schools in San Francisco.

1860

Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States.
First Japanese delegation visits Washington, D.C.

1861

Harriet Jacobs writes Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
Emily Pauline Johnson is born.

1862

Blacks are allowed to enlist in Union army.
Slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia.

1863

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley founded a school for young black girls.
Mary Church Terrell is born on September 23.
Harriet E. Adams Wilson dies [approximate]
The Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect on January 1st.
New York City draft riots: African Americans protest in New York for the right to vote.

1864

"Equal Pay": Congress passes bill for equal pay and equipment to African American military troops.

1865

Edith Eaton is born.
Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is passed and ratified, outlawing slavery.

1866

Civil Rights Act: Congress overrides Johnson's veto and passes the Civil Rights Act, which legislates full citizenship and equal civil rights for African Americans.
Fourteenth Amendment passed: equal legal protection and due process for African Americans.
Founding of Ku Klux Klan in Memphis.

1867

Reconstruction Begins.
African Americans are granted the right to vote in the District of Columbia.

1868

Fourteenth Amendment ratified.

1869

Fifteenth Amendment approved: all male citizens are given the right to vote.

1870

Fifteenth Amendment is ratified.
Hiram Revels elected senator of Mississippi. He is the first African American elected to the senate; he served one year of the term.

1875

Winnifred Eaton is born.
Civil Rights Act is expanded; adds equal rights in public accommodations and jury duty.
Blanche Kelso Bruce is elected to the U.S. Senate and becomes the first African American to serve a full term. Not until 1969 would another African American be elected.

1876

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin is born.

1877

End Of Reconstruction.
President Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws federal troops from the south, ending federal protection of African American rights.

1880

Angelina Weld Grimké is born on February 27th.

1882

Sarah Mapps Douglass dies.
Jessie Redmon Fauset is born.

1883

Sarah Winnemucca publishes Life Among the Piutes, the first known autobiography written by a Native American woman.
Civil Rights Act is overturned. The Supreme Court declares the 1875 Act "unconstitutional," claiming that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids states but not individual citizens to discriminate against persons on the basis of race.
385 lynching murders of African Americans are known to have taken place during 1883 alone.

1884

Mary Church Terrell obtains a Bachelor's Degree from Oberlin College.

1888

Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket) is born.
Mary Church Terrell obtains a Master's Degree from Oberlin College.

1889

91 lynching murders of African Americans are known to have taken place during 1889 alone.

1890

Founding of the African American League.
Passage of the "Mississippi Plan," legislating the use of literacy and "understanding" tests at voting sites, effectively blocking African Americans from the booths. Statutes in kind adopted by South Carolina (1895), Louisiana (1898), North Carolina (1900), Alabama (1901), Virginia (1901) and Oklahoma (1910).

1891

Ella Cara Deloria is born.
Zora Neale Hurston is born.
Nella Larsen (Imes) is born.
Mary Church Terrell marries Robert Terrell.

1892

Iola Leroy, by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, is published. It is the first published novel written by a black woman.
The Geary Act prohibits Chinese immigration for another 10 years.

1894

Saito, a Japanese man, applies for U.S. citizenship. Courts refuse because he is neither white nor black.

1895

Booker T. Washington delivers his "Atlanta Compromise" speech, advocating a mild "gradualist" policy of desegregation.

1896

The Niagara Movement is established by W.E.B. Dubois and others.
Plessy vs. Ferguson case: Supreme Court establishes the "seperate but equal" dictum, sanctifying Jim Crow laws.
National Association of Colored Women is founded, headed by Mary Church Terrell.

1897

Harriet Jacobs dies.
Ellen Craft dies.
First South Asians (Sikhs) come to Canada.

1898

The Philippine Islands become a protectorate of the United States under the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War. Hawaii is also annexed to the United States.

1899

First Sikhs allowed to land in San Franscisco.

1900-1945

1900

International Ladies' Garment Workers Union is founded

1901

George H. White gives up his seat in Congress on March 4, marking the start of an absence of African Americans in Congress that will last the next 28 years.

1902

Gwendolyn Bennett is born.
Congress indefinitely extends the prohibition against Chinese immigration.

1903

W.E.B Dubois publishes The Souls Of Black Folk, rejecting Booker T. Washington's moderate stance in favor of a more active agitation for civil rights.

1904

Maude Kegg (Naawakamigookwe) is born.
Mary McLeod Bethune founds a school for black girls -- Bethune-Cookman College.

1906

A decree is issued by the San Francisco school board that all persons of Asian ancestry must attend segregated schools in Chinatown.
California anti-miscegenation laws are amended to bar marriage between white and "Mongolian." Major earthquake in San Francisco destroys all municipal records and opens the way for a new wave of Chinese immigrants. Immigrant men could now claim to be U.S. citizens and have the right to bring wives and children to America.
First Sikh organization in Canada.
At 16 years of age, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn gives a speech entitled "What Socialism Will Do For Women" at a Harlem Socialist Club.

1907

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley dies.
Dorothy West is born.
Book sales in America suggest that from 1895-1907 books written by women have become as popular as books by men.
Anti-Hindu Riot. 700 South Asians expelled from Bellingham, Washington to British Columbia.
President Theodore Roosevelt enters into Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan to limit Japanese immigration to the mainland and to Hawaii. It also includes a ban on further Korean immigration to the United States as laborers, thus opening up farming jobs in Hawaii for Filipinos. Korean immigration virtually ends during the period of Japanese occupation (1910-45) and does not resume until the Immigration Act of 1965 is passed.

1908

Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP attorney in Brown vs. Board of Education and later U.S. Supreme Court justice, is born.

1909

The NAACP is founded by W. E. B. DuBois, Jane Addams, and others on February 12.

1910

Josephina Niggli is born.
Antagonism towards Asians leads to passage of "orders-in-council" curtailing Asian immigration into Canada.

1911

Frances Harper dies.
Founding of National Urban League.

1912

1913

Emily Pauline Johnson dies.
Gadar Party, a South Asian immigrant nationalist organization in the Pacific Coast regions of US and Canada, is founded.
Federally legislated segregation of work, lunch and restrooms begins.
Brillo pads are sold in the US for the first time.
The first domestic refrigerator is produced by a Chicago company.

1914

Edith Eaton dies.
May 23rd: Japanese ship Komagata Maru containing 376 passengers (South Asian) is quarentined for two months in Vancouver harbor before being sent back.
WWI begins.
Mother's Day is declared a U.S. national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson.

1915

Lipstick is sold for the first time.
US Court of Appeals rules that it is illegal for women to work at night.

1916

The 1st birth control clinic in the US opens in Brooklyn, NY.

1917

Gwendolyn Brooks is born.
Han Suyin is born.
President Wilson establishes the Women's Committee of Council of National Defense to organize and coordinate American women's war efforts.
Supreme Court strikes down the Louisville, KY ordinance mandating segregated neighborhoods.

1918

Birth of the Pulitzer Prize.
WWI ends.

1919

Ignatia Broker is born.
"Red Summer": 26 race riots in the U.S. between April and October.

1920

American Civil Liberties Union is founded.
League of Women Voters formed in Chicago.
19th Amendment is ratified.
Alice Childress is born.

1921

Bessie Smith's first blues recording is made.

1922

The Harlem Renaissance begins
Federal anti-lynching bill is killed by filibuster in US Senate.

1923

Mitsuye Yamada is born in Fukuoka, Japan on July 5.
The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the Bhagat Singh Thind case ruled that Indian immigrants were Asian rather than white, making it impossible for immigrants already in the U.S. to gain citizenship.

1924

Claribel Alegria is born in Nicaragua.
Wakako Yamauchi is born in Westmoreland, California on October 24.
Ora Washington becomes the first black woman to win the American Tennis Association's singles title.

1925

Etel Adnan is born in Beirut, Lebanon.
The New Negro, edited by Alain Locke, is published. This book, which came to define the literary aesthetics of the Harlem Renaissance, includes an essay by Zora Neale Hurston

1926

Attorney Violette Neatley Anderson becomes the first African American woman to argue before the U.S Supreme Court.

1927

Coretta Scott King is born.

1928

Maya Angelou is born.

1929

Paule Marshall is born.
Martin Luther King is born in Atlanta, GA.
Great Depression begins.

1930

Elizabeth Cook-Lynn is born.
Lorraine Hansberry is born.
Pauline Hopkins dies.
Nella Larsen (Imes) is the first African American woman to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She uses the funds to travel to Europe in preparation for her third novel, which was never published.

1931

Adrienne Kennedy is born.
Toni Morrison is born on February 18.

1933

Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve is born on February 21.
Frances Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor, the first female Cabinet member.
American born Asian women can regain American citizenship after ending marriages to foreigners.

1934

Audre Lorde is born.
Sonia Sanchez is born.
Nylon is invented.

1935

Joy Kogawa is born.
Nicholasa Mohr is born.

1936

Lucille Clifton is born.
Jayne Cortez is born.
Virginia Hamilton is born.
June Jordan is born.
Mourning Dove (Christine Quintasket) dies.

1937

Maryse Condè is born.
Anita Desai is born.
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Harlem Renaissance author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, is published.

1938

Gertrude Simmons Bonnin dies.
Bapsi Sidhwa is born.
In order to challenge segregated housing, Lorraine Hansberry's family buys a home in a white neighborhood, but they are evicted by Illinois courts.
The first African-American woman is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives -- Democrat Crystal Bird Fauset.

1939

Paula Gunn Allen is born.
Toni Cade Bambara is born.
Barbara Chase-Riboud is born.
Cherry Muhanji born.
WWII begins.
Birth Control Federation of America begins its "Negro Project" to control the population of peoples deemed "less fit to rear children."

1940

Leila Ahmed is born.
Nora DeLoach is born.
Lorraine Hansberry's father Carl Hansberry and NAACP lawyers win their case against segregated housing in U.S. Supreme Court.
Maxine Hong Kingston born.
Anne Moody born.
Bharati Mukherjee is born.

1941

Sandra Benítez is born.
Beth Brant is born.
Kleya Forté-Escamilla is born
Diane Glancy is born.
Barbara Neely is born.
US enters WWII.

1942

Gloria Anzaldúa is born.
Rayna Green is born.
Pat Mora is born.
Saundra Sharp is born.
Mitsuye Yamada and her family are sent to a Japanese internment camp in Idaho.
President Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, sending Japanese Americans to internment camps.

1943

Mildred Taylor is born.
Magnuson Act finally repeals the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. A quota of 105 per year set for Chinese immigration based on a formula set at one-sixth the total population of that ancestry in the 1920 census.

1944

Angela Davis is born on January 26 in Birmingham, Alabama.
Shirley Lim is born in Malacca, Malaysia.
Patricia McKissack is born.
Pat Parker is born on January 20 in Houston, Texas.
Alice Walker is born.
Sherley Anne Williams is born.

1945-present

1945

Carolyn Rodgers is born.
Esmeralda Santiago is born in the late 1940's.
Congress passes War Brides Act, allowing 6,000 Chinese women to enter United States as brides of Chinese American soldiers. All American internment camps for Japanese Americans are closed.
VE Day: Germany and European axis forces surrender to allies.
August 6: U.S. drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
August 8: U.S. drops the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki.
August 9: VJ Day -- Japan surrenders to allies. WWII is over.
August 19: Ho Chi Minh establishes the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi; Vietnam is divided.
Birth of Tupperware.

1946

Michelle Cliff is born in Jamaica on November 2.
Chrystos is born on November 7.
Janet Campbell Hale is born.
Anna Lee Walters is born in Pawnee, Oklahoma.
The Luce-Celler Bill established very small quotas for immigration from India (100 per year).
Philippines become independent. U.S. citizenship offered to all Filipinos living in the United States, not just servicemen.
Mexican women gain sufferage.
Debut of the bikini.

1947

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is born.
Octavia Butler is born.
Linda Hogan is born.
Wendy Law-Yone is born.
Assata Shakur is born.
Roberta Hill Whiteman is born.
Valerie Wilson Wesley is born.
Jackie Robinson joins the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's "color barrier."

1948

Jeannette Armstrong is born.
Denise Chavez is born.
Wendy Rose is born.
Ntozake Shange is born.
Leslie Marmon Silko is born.
Congress passes Displaced Persons Act. Gives permanent resident status to 3,500 Chinese visitors, seamen, and students caught here because of Chinese civil war. California repeals law banning interracial marriage.
Evacuation Claims Act authorizes payment of settlements to people of Japanese ancestry who suffered economic losses from internment: 10 cents is returned for every $1 lost.

1949

Tina Ansa is born.
Hallie Quinn Brown dies.
Jessica Hagedorn is born.
Joy Harjo is born.
Le Ly Hayslip is born.
Gayl Jones is born.
Jamaica Kincaid is born.
Nuclear arms race between the US and USSR (the "Cold War") begins.
Birth of NATO.

1950

Julia Alvarez is born.
Gwendolyn Brooks wins the Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen.
Beverly Hungry Wolf is born.
Bebe Moore Campbell is born.
Gwendolyn Parker is born.
Courtni Wright is born.
Gloria Naylor is born.

1951

Meena Alexander is born.
LeAnne Howe is born.
Terry McMillan is born.
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha is born.
Patricia Williams born in Boston, MA.

1952

Judith Ortiz Cofer is born on February 24 in Puerto Rico.
Rita Dove is born.
bell hooks is born.
Cherríe Moraga is born.
Naomi Shihab Nye is born.

1954

Elmaz Abinader born in Masontown, PA.

1956

Achy Obejas was born in Havana, Cuba.

1957

Debra Magpie Earling born in Spokane, Washington.

1963

Heid Erdrich born in Breckenridge, MN.

1964

Suzan-Lori Parks born in Fort Knox, KY.

1965

Lan Samantha Chang born in Appleton, Wisconsin.

1974

Mai Neng Moua born in Laos.

1987

Ignatia Broker dies.

Rita Dove wins the Pulitzer Prize for Thomas and Beulah.

First formal signing of the Proclamation of Asian Pacific American Heritage Week in the White House.

The Immigration Reform & Control Act of 1985 is passed by the House of Representatives on October 17, 1987, and signed by the President on November 6, 1987. It raises the Hong Kong quota from 600 to 5,000 a year; and allows aliens who can prove that they were in the U.S. prior to January 1, 1982 to apply for temporary status and become U.S. citizens after seven years from the time of application. There are no changes in the preference system which allows for family reunification.

1988

Lucille Clifton is nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Demetria Martinez is arrested on a charge of smuggling immigrant women across the U.S. Border.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 which implements the recommendations of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians is signed into law by the President. The law apologizes and offers redress and reparations to thousands of Japanese Americans who were denied their civil and constitutional rights by the U.S. government during World War II.

1989

Winona LaDuke receives the International Reebok Human Rights Award for her activist work regarding American Indian economic and environmental concerns.

Pat Parker dies on June 17.

1990

The National Endowment for the Arts awards Maude Kegg (Naawakamigookwe) the National Heritage Fellowship.

1991

U.S. lifts the ban on organized travel to Vietnam.

1992

Audre Lorde dies.

Korean businesses looted and burned during riots in Los Angeles after verdict announced in Rodney King case.

Washington eases the trade embargo by allowing commercial sales to Vietnam that meet basic human needs. Telecommunications links are established. Restrictions on non-governmental and non-profit groups with projects in Vietnam are eased.

1993

Rita Dove becomes the seventh Poet Laureate/Consultant in Poetry of the Library of Congress, a position she holds from 1993 to 1995

Toni Morrison receives the Nobel Prize for literature.

1994

More than 20,000 Vietnamese immigrants arrive in America.

President Clinton announces the lifting of the Vietnamese trade embargo.

Alice Childress dies.

1995

Toni Cade Bambara dies.

Edwidge Danticat wins the Pushcart Short Story Prize.

Terry McMillan's Waiting to Exhale is released as a movie.

Susan Power receives the PEN Hemingway Award for The Grass Dancer.

President Clinton accounces normalization of relations with Vietnam.

Lorna Dee Cervantes wins the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award.

1996

Winona LaDuke is Ralph Nader's vice-presidential running mate for the Green Party.

Maude Kegg (Naawakamigookwe) dies on January 6.

1998

Dorothy West dies.

Margaret Walker dies.

2000

Jhumpa Lahiri wins the Pulitzer Prize for her collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies.

Gwendolyn Brooks dies.

2001

2004

Gloria Anzaldúa dies.