| January 7, 1891 | Born in Notasulga, Alabama, the fifth of eight children, to John Hurston, a carpenter and Baptist preacher, and Lucy Potts Hurston, a former schoolteacher. |
| September 1917 - June 1918 | Attends Morgan Academy in Baltimore, completing the high school requirements. |
| Summer 1918 | Works as a waitress in a nightclub and a manicurist in a black-owned barbershop that only serves whites. |
| 1918 - 1919 | Attends Howard Prep School, Washington, D.C. |
| 1919 - 1924 | Attends Howard University; receives an associate degree in 1920. |
| 1921 | Publishes her first story, "John Redding Goes to Sea," in Stylus, the campus literary society's magazine. |
| December 1924 | Publishes "Drenched in Light," a short story, in Opportunity. |
| 1925 | Submits a story, "Spunk," and a play, Color Struck, to Opportunity's literary contest. Both win second-place award; publishes "Spunk" in the June number. |
| 1925 - 1927 | Attends Barnard College, studying anthropology with Franz Boas. |
| 1926 | Begins field work for Boas in Harlem. |
| January 1926 | Publishes "John Redding Goes to Sea" in Opportunity. |
| Summer 1926 | Organizes Fire! With Langston Hughes and Wallace Thurman; they publish only one issue, in November 1926. The issue includes Hurston's "Sweat." |
| August 1926 | Publishes "Muttsy" in Opportunity. |
| September 1926 | Publishes "Possum or Pig" in the Forum. |
| September - November 1926 | Publishes "The Eatonville Anthology" in the Messenger. |
| 1927 | Publishes The First One, a play, in Charles S. Johnson's Ebony and Topaz. |
| February 1927 | Goes to Florida to collect folklore. |
| May 19,1927 | Marries Herbert Sheen. |
| September 1927 | First visits Mrs. Rufus Osgood Mason, seeking patronage. |
| October 1927 | Publishes an account of the black settlement at St. Augustine, Florida, in the Journal of Negro History; also in this issue: "Cudjo's Own Story of the Last African Slaver." |
| December 1927 | Signs a contract with Mason, enabling her to return to the South to collect folklore. |
| 1928 | Satirized as "Sweetie Mae Carr" in Wallace Thurman's novel about the Harlem Renaissance Infants of the Spring; receives a bachelor of arts degree from Barnard. |
| January 1928 | Relations with Sheen break off. |
| May 1928 | Publishes "How It Feels to be Colored Me" in The World Tomorrow. |
| 1930 - 1932 | Organizes the field notes that become Mules and Men. |
| May - June 1930 | Works on the play Mule Bone with Langston Hughes. |
| 1931 | Publishes "Hoodoo in America" in the Journal of American Folklore. |
| February 1931 | Breaks with Langston Hughes over the authorship of Mule Bone. |
| July 7,1931 | Divorces Sheen. |
| September 1931 | Writes for a theatrical revue called Fast and Furious. |
| January 1932 | Writes and stages a theatrical revue called The Great Day, first performed on January 10 on Broadway at the John Golden Theatre; works with the creative literature department of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, to produce a concert program of Negro music. |
| 1933 | Writes "The Fiery Chariot." |
| January 1933 | Stages From Sun to Sun (a version of Great Day) at Rollins College. |
| August 1933 | Publishes "The Gilded Six-Bits" in Story. |
| 1934 | Publishes six essays in Nancy Cunard's anthology, Negro. |
| January 1934 | Goes to Bethune-Cookman College to establish a school of dramatic arts "based on pure Negro expression." |
| May 1934 | Publishes Jonah's Gourd Vine, originally titled Big Nigger; it is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. |
| September 1934 | Publishes "The Fire and the Cloud" in the Challenge. |
| November 1934 | Singing Steel (a version of Great Day) performed in Chicago. |
| January 1935 | Begins to study for a Ph.D in anthropology at Columbia University on a fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation. |
| August 1935 | Joins the WPA Federal Theater Project as a "dramatic coach." |
| October 1935 | Mules and Men published. |
| March 1936 | Awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study West Indian obeah practices. |
| April - September 1936 | In Jamaica. |
| September - March 1937 | In Haiti; writes Their Eyes Were Watching God in seven weeks. |
| May 1937 | Returns to Haiti on a renewed Guggenheim. |
| September 1937 | Returns to the United States; Their Eyes Were Watching God published, September 18. |
| February - March 1938 | Writes Tell My Horse; it is published the same year. |
| April 1939 | Joins the Federal Writers Project in Florida to work on The Florida Negro. |
| 1939 | Publishes "Now Take Noses" in Cordially Yours. |
| June 1939 | Receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Morgan State college. |
| Summer 1939 | Hired at a drama instructor by North Carolina College for Negroes at Durham; meets Paul Green, professor of drama, at the University of North Carolina. |
| November 1939 | Moses, Man of the Mountain published. |
| February 1940 | Files for divorce from Price, though the two are reconciled briefly. |
| Summer 1940 | Makes a folklore-collecting trip to South Carolina. |
| Spring - July 1941 | Writes Dust Tracks on a Road. |
| July 1941 | Publishes "Cock Robin, Beale Street" in the Southern Literary Messenger. |
| October 1941-January 1942 | Works as a story consultant at Paramount Pictures. |
| July 1942 | Publishes "Story in Harlem Slang" in the American Mercury. |
| September 5, 1942 | Publishes a profile of Lawrence Silas in the Saturday Evening Post. |
| November 1942 | Dust Tracks on a Road published. |
| February 1943 | Awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Dust Tracks; on the cover of the Saturday Review. |
| March 1943 | Receives Howard University's Distinguished Alumni Award. |
| May 1943 | Publishes "The 'Pet Negro' Syndrome" in the American Mercury. |
| November 1943 | Divorce from Price granted. |
| June 1944 | Publishes "My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience" in the Negro Digest. |
| 1945 | Writes Mrs. Doctor; it is rejected by Lippincott. |
| March 1945 | Publishes "The Rise of the Begging Joints" in the American Mercury. |
| December 1945 | Publishes "Crazy for This Democracy" in the Negro Digest. |
| 1947 | Publishes a review of Robert Tallant's Voodoo in New Orleans in the Journal of American Folklore. |
| May 1947 | Goes to British Honduras to research black communities in Central America; writes Seraph on the Suwanee; stays in Honduras until March 1948. |
| October 1948 | Seraph on the Suwanee published. |
| March 1950 | Publishes "Conscience of the Court" in the Saturday Evening Post, while working as a maid in Rivo Island, Florida. |
| April 1950 | Publishes "What White Publishers Won't Print" in the Saturday Evening Post. |
| November 1950 | Publishes "I Saw Negro Votes Peddled" in the American Legion magazine. |
| Winter 1950 - 1951 | Moves to Belle Glade, Florida. |
| June 1951 | Publishes "Why the Negro Won't Buy Communism" in the American Legion magazine. |
| December 8, 1951 | Publishes "A Negro Voter Sizes up Taft" in the Saturday Evening Post. |
| 1952 | Hired by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the Ruby McCollum case. |
| May 1956 | Receives an award for "education and human relations" at Bethune-Cookman College. |
| June 1956 | Works as a librarian at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. |
| 1957 - 1959 | Writes a column on "Hoodoo and Black Magic" for the Fort Pierce Chronicle. |
| 1958 | Works as a substitute teacher at Lincoln Park Academy, Fort Pierce. |
| Early 1959 | Suffers a stroke. |
| October 1959 | Forced to enter the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. |
| January 28, 1960 | Dies in the St. Lucie County Welfare Home of "hypertensive heart disease"; buried in an unmarked grave in the Garden of Heavenly Rest, Fort Pierce. |
| August 1973 | Alice Walker discovers and marks Hurston's grave. |
| March 1975 | Walker publishes "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston," in Ms., launching a Hurston revival. |