February 18 …

Toni Morrison was a Nobel Prize-winning and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, editor and university professor. Her works, revered for their epic themes and rich language portrayed African Americans in times and settings throughout American history.

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, OH, Morrison was the second oldest of four children to father, George Wofford, a welder, and mother, Ramah, a domestic worker. Morrison credited her parents with instilling in her a love of reading, music and folklore along with clarity and perspective.

Raised in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison admits not being fully aware of racial divisions until she was in her teens. She recalled, “When I was in first grade, nobody thought I was inferior. I was the only Black in the class and the only child who could read.” Morrison took Latin and read many great works of European literature, graduating from Lorain High School with honors in 1949.

At Howard University, Morrison majored in English and chose the classics as her minor. Graduating from Howard in 1953, Morrison pursued a master’s degree in literature at Cornell University, writing her thesis on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner. After completing her master’s in 1955, she took her first teaching position at Texas Southern University.

Two years later Morrison returned to Howard University to teach English, meeting her husband, Harold Morrison. The couple began their family during this period, a season when she also began writing her first novel. They went on to have another son, Slade, in 1964, although the couple eventually separated.

Morrison left academia to work as an editor in publishing, first for a textbook publisher, then for Random House. Morrison became a highly sought after editor of literary fiction and nonfiction, working with Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, Angela Davis, and Muhammad Ali.

Among her best-known novels are The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Love, and A Mercy.

Morrison did not publish her own work until she was 39 years old. The Bluest Eye — her debut novel published in 1970 — tells the tragic story of Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl from an abusive home. Eleven-year-old Pecola equates beauty and social acceptance with whiteness; she therefore longs to have “the bluest eye.”

Three years later, Morrison published her second novel called Sula, which was nominated for the National Book Award.

Morrison’s third book, Song of Solomon — published in 1977 — was the first work by an African American author to be a featured selection of the Book of the Month club since Richard Wright’s Native Son. Song of Solomon follows the journey of Milkman Dead, a Midwestern urbanite who attempts to make sense of his family roots and the difficult realities of his world. The book would go on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award and become a perennial favorite among academics and general readers.

In 1980, Morrison was appointed to the National Council on the Arts. The following year she published Tar Baby, a Caribbean-based novel which drew inspiration from ethnic folktales but was greeted with mixed reviews.

Her next, and arguably most acclaimed work, Beloved, came in 1987. Based on the true story of a real-world enslaved African American woman, Margaret Garner, the main character Sethe, a former enslaved person, is haunted by her decision to kill her children rather than see them become enslaved. The book explores love and the supernatural, with the deceased child returning alive to inhabit Sethe’s home. This spellbinding work, stayed on the Bestseller list for 25 weeks, and won Morrison several literary awards, including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Several other acclaimed novels followed.

In 1993, Morrison became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Three years later, she was also chosen by the National Endowment for the Humanities to give the Jefferson Lecture and was honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Morrison’s work continues to influence writers and artists through her focus on African American life and her commentary on race relations. While writing and producing, Morrison was also a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. Her work earned her an honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Oxford, and the opportunity to be a guest curator at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

In 2000, Morrison was named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress. She also was widely celebrated with literary prizes and honorary degrees, and in 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Morrison also wrote children’s books with her son until his death at 45 years old. Two years later, Morrison published the last book they were working on together and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in that same month.

In June 2019, director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders released a documentary of her life called Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Toni Morrison passed away two months later from complications of pneumonia.

Footnotes:

• Alexander, Kerri Lee. “Toni Morrison.” National Women’s History Museum, 2019. Accessed 8 May 2025.
• Biography.com Editors, “Toni Morrison Biography,” The Biography.com, 6 May 2021. Accessed 8 May 2025.