This Filipino American history timeline was created and compiled by Helen Toribio and Abe Ignacio.
Post World War II to 2013
1946
January 18, 1946, the 79th Congress passes Rescission Act, which rescinds FDR’s wartime promise of equal benefits to Filipino veterans of the USAFFE. In March, President Truman signs the act, barring these veterans from most benefits under the G.I. Bill of Rights.
March 10, 1946, Carlos Bulosan’s semi-autobiographical novel, America Is In the Heart, is published.
July 2, 1946, The Luce-Celler Act (also called the Filipino Naturalization Act) enables Filipino immigrants who arrived before March 1943 to become naturalized citizens. Filipino quota is adjusted to 100 annually. Hawaii is exempted from this quota due to a postwar labor shortage; 6,000 men, 446 women, and 915 children come as plantation workers before the Philippines is officially independent.
July 4, 1946, the U.S. recognizes Philippine independence, ending almost five decades of American rule.
1947
March 14, 1947, the U.S. Military Bases agreement is signed, allowing 22 U.S. military bases in the Philippines. It also lets the U.S. Navy recruit Philippine citizens who are allowed to naturalize. Filipino Navy families begin settling in such cities as San Diego, Alameda, Vallejo, Seattle, Charleston, Virginia Beach, and in Hawaii.
1948
May 1948, the Filipino-led Cannery Workers and Farm Laborers Union launches an unsuccessful asparagus strike in Stockton, California, the first major agricultural work stoppage after World War II.
October 1, 1948, the California Supreme Court, in Perez v. Sharp becomes the first court since 1887 to repeal a state’s anti-miscegenation law.
1950
The Filipino population in the U.S. reaches 122,707. Stable communities of Filipinos, with a Baby Boom second generation, begin to flourish.
1952
June 27, 1952, the McCarran-Walter Act abolishes country-of-origin exclusions but seeks to exclude “undesirable” immigrants at the height of the Cold War and the McCarthy witch-hunts. Filipino labor leaders in Seattle Chris Mensalvas and Ernesto Mangaoang are targeted as subversives, but attempts to deport them fail.
1954
May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules, in the landmark civil rights case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that state-sanctioned segregation of public schools violates the 14th Amendment and is therefore unconstitutional.
1961
The first issue of the Philippine News is published by Alex Esclamado. The paper becomes the longest-running Filipino American newspaper.
1964
July 2, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the most comprehensive civil rights legislation by far, prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, or national origin. The law also gives the federal government powers to enforce desegregation.
1965-1966
October 3, 1965, President Johnson signs the Immigration Act of 1965, abolishing racial and national origins preferences. The Philippines is allowed a 20,000 annual quota under a skills preference system. Thousands of Filipino medical, administrative professionals and skilled workers immigrate, starting the chain of family reunifications that continues today.
September 8, 1965, some 2,000 mostly Filipino members of the Agricultural Worker’s Organizing Committee (AWOC) begin the famous Delano Grape Strike. A week later, Cesar Chavez’s National Farm Worker’s Association joins the strike. In 1966 they form the United Farm Workers Union-AFL/CIO (UFW) with Cesar Chavez as president and Filipinos Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz as vice presidents.
1967
June 12, 1967, U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, rules anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional.
1968
January 30, 1968, Tet Offensive by Vietnamese guerrillas begins, heightening the U.S. antiwar and civil rights movements.
November 6, 1968, the Third World Strike at San Francisco State College begins after months of student protest actions. Filipino students in the Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE) play a large role. The strike leads to the establishment of the College of Ethnic Studies. The following year Filipino students join the Third World Students strike at UC Berkeley, leading to the formation of the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Asian American Studies program.
1971
June 1971, the first issue of Kalayaan newspaper appears, published by the Kalayaan collective of Filipino left activists in the San Francisco Bay Area. The publication ushers in the formation of Filipino left collectives in San Jose, New York, San Diego, Seattle and other cities, and college campuses.
September 3, 1971, hundreds of young Filipinos gather in Seattle for the First Filipino People’s Far West Convention in Seattle. Subsequent conventions are held in Stockton (1972), San Francisco (1973), and Los Angeles (1974). The Far West Conventions continue annually, with labor organizers, political activists, artists, and educators, leading discussions of the Filipino American labor movement, ethnic identity, civil rights, Philippine politics, art and culture.
1972
September 21, 1972, Ferdinand Marcos imposes military dictatorship in the Philippines, sparking a massive protest movement among Filipinos in the United States. Thousands flee the Philippines, seeking political freedom. The United States maintains staunch support for the dictatorship to protect its military bases, which are used for its war efforts in Vietnam and force projection in the Cold War.
September 23, 1971, the National Committee for the Restoration of Civil Liberties is founded in San Francisco in response to Marcos’ power grab. The organization will be replaced by the Anti-Martial Law Coalition, which forms at a national conference in Chicago the following year. Its name will later change to the Coalition Against the Marcos Dictatorship.
1973
Filipinos for Affirmative Action is founded in Oakland, California to provide immigrant services and fight discrimination. It is known today as Filipino Advocates for Justice.
July 13, 1973, Katipunan ng Demokratikong Pilipino (KDP), or Union of Democratic Filipinos, is founded in Santa Cruz, California, to support the revolutionary left in the Philippines and advocate for Filipinos’ democratic rights in the U.S. It will be a key national opposition group to the Marcos regime and lead national and local community-based campaigns against racial and national discrimination. The group will disband in 1989.
Anti-Marcos organizations founded in the fall include the Movement for a Free Philippines (September 22) in Washington, DC and the Friends of the Filipino People (October 20), Philadelphia. All oppositions groups will campaign in Washington for an end to U.S. support for the Marcos dictatorship.
October 23, 1973, U.S. Supreme Court reverses WWII veteran Marciano Haw Hibi’s successful naturalization suit of 1967. Justice Thurgood Marshall strongly dissents, spurring more Filipino veterans to sue for citizenship. Federal Judge Charles Renfrew in 1977 will rule in favor of the lawsuit of 68 veterans. President Carter in 1981 will withdraw the government’s appeal and grant citizenship to the 68 Filipino veterans.
November 1973, Larry Asera is elected to the Vallejo, California city council, becoming the first Filipino American to be elected to political office on the mainland.
1974
March 1974, Filipino, Japanese, Chinese and Alaska Native cannery workers of the Alaska Cannery Workers Association file a class action suit against Ward’s Cove Packing Co. and Dole Foods Co., accusing the companies of discriminating against non-white workers who are paid less than white counterparts, subjected race-based job assignments and given lesser-quality living quarters and meals. The case will go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1975
January 1, 1975, Eduardo Malapit, first Filipino American mayor, takes office in Kauai.
From 1975 to the early 1980s, a campaign led by the Union of Democratic Filipinos successfully defends hundreds foreign medical graduates, including Filipino doctors, who are threatened with deportation for applying for permanent residency. A similar campaign prevents the deportation of thousands of Filipino nurses who lose their working visas for failing their first U.S. licensure exams.
August 4, 1977, after a nine-year struggle, elderly tenants of the International Hotel in San Francisco are evicted amid a massive protest, and the building is soon demolished, leaving hundreds of single and aging Filipino and Chinese men homeless.
1978
February 1978, murder and conspiracy charges are dismissed against nurses Filipina Narciso and Leonora Perez who were convicted in 1977 for the deaths of 35 patients at the Veterans’ hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The Filipino community campaigned for their defense, led by the Union of Democratic Filipinos. In the course of the mobilization, Filipinos held their first-ever nationally coordinated protest demonstrations on a domestic issue in the U.S.
1981
June 1, 1981, Union leaders Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo are gunned down by thugs led by a longtime ally of Ferdinand Marcos. Viernes and Domingo were activists of Union of Democratic Filipinos, reformers of Seattle’s Local 37 Cannery Workers Union-ILWU and core movers of the Ward’s Cove discrimination lawsuit. The killers are convicted and sent to prison for life without parole; families of the victims successfully sue Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos for wrongful death.
1982
November 26, 1982, Filipino American National Historical Society is established in Seattle, Washington,. The society actively researches, preserves and disseminates the history of Filipinos in the U.S.
1983
August 21, 1983, Senator and opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila airport upon his return to the Philippines, leading to massive protests in the Philippines and an upsurge of opposition among Filipinos in the U.S.
1986
February 22-25, 1986, The “People Power” uprising topples the Marcos regime and elects Corazon Aquino president of the Philippines. She begins the restoration of democratic institutions.
November 6, 1986, U.S. Congress enacts the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), granting amnesty to undocumented immigrants, including thousands of Filipinos.
1989
June 5, 1989, the Supreme Court rules 5-4 in the Ward’s Cove case that to prove discrimination, the salmon cannery workers must do more than present data showing numerical imbalance (“disparate impact”) among the races in different jobs. Congress effectively reverses the court with an amendment restoring an easier-to-prove discrimination standard. But to ensure the bill’s passage, the Senate agrees to Alaska Republican Sen. Frank Murkowski’s provision preventing the Wards Cove plaintiffs from pursuing their remaining claims under the looser standard.
1990
November, 29, 1990, the Immigration Act of 1990 allows family reunification for those given amnesty in 1986. The Act also allows more than 150,000 Filipino veterans of World War II to immigrate to the United States. Approximately 20,000 become U.S. citizens.
December 7, 1990, Lorraine Rodero-Inouye becomes the first Filipino American woman to be mayor of a U.S. county, on the Big Island of Hawaii.
Throughout the 1990s a political empowerment movement takes shape as national Filipino American organizations–such as the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, Filipino Civil Rights Advocates and the Filipina Women’s Network campaign for more political appointments or elected office and justice for Filipino WWII veterans.
The Veteran’s Equity Center in San Francisco, the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans and other national organizations, continue the campaign for Filipino World War II veterans’ benefits well into the 2000s. In 1996 Filipino veterans set up “Equity Village” in Macarthur Park in Los Angeles and go on a hunger strike to publicize their campaign for benefits.
1991
January 9, 1991, David M. Valderrama becomes the first Filipino American to be elected to a state legislature on the mainland, in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
1992
November 3, 1992, Velma Veloria is elected to the Washington State Legislature, the first Filipina elected to a state legislature in the continental United States.
1994
December 5, 1994, Benjamin Cayetano, descendant of plantation workers, becomes governor of Hawaii.
1997
August 1997, The National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NAFFAA), is formed in Washington, D.C., modeled after the NAACP as the central advocate of Filipino American social and political concerns. It begins work by taking up the fight of Filipino World War II veterans for equal benefits as U.S. veterans.
1998
Library of Congress changes subject heading “Philippine Insurrection” to “Philippine-American War.”
1999
August 10, 1999, Filipino American postal worker Joseph Ileto is gunned down by white supremacist Buford Furrow who has just shot five people at the North Valley Jewish Center in Granada Hills, California. Ileto’s family calls for hate crime and gun control legislation.
2002 -2005
Stockton City Council designates the Little Manila Historic Site, the nation’s first Filipino American city-designated historic site. Los Angeles designates Historic Filipinotown. The new International Hotel is dedicated, and the Manilatown Center on its ground floor is opened.
2009
February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, with a provision creating the Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation Fund. Eligible veterans who are U.S. citizens receive a one-time payment of $15,000; eligible veterans who are not U.S. citizens receive a one-time payment of $9,000. But since Obama signed the bill into law three years ago, the VA has only approved 18,000 citizen and non-citizen Filipino veterans to receive payments from the fund.
2011
January 3, 2011, Tani Cantil-Sakauye is sworn in as Chief Justice of California’s Supreme Court, the first non-Caucasian, first Asian-Filipina American and only the second woman to serve as the state’s Chief Justice. She was appointed on July 22, 2010, and confirmed by an overwhelming majority of voters in a general election on November 2 that year.
2012
November 6, 2012, Robert Bonta of Alameda, California, becomes the first Filipino American elected to the State Assembly. At least 14 Filipino Americans—one Republican and the rest Democrats—won national and state positions in California, Hawaii and Virginia.
2013
May 7, 2013, the New Haven school board renames Alvarado Middle School in Union City, California, in honor of farm labor leaders Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, after months of rallies by Filipino Americans and their supporters and heated debates with opponents. It is the first school in the country to be named after Filipino Americans.