Toni Morrison
Novelist, editor, educator
Born: Feb. 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio
Died: Aug. 5, 2019, in New York City
Lived In: Princeton, New Jersey
New Jersey Hall of Fame, Class of 2008: Arts & Letters

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison rose from a working-class background to carve out a critically and commercially successful career writing about the Black experience in America.

Through prose described by The New York Times as “luminous,” Morrison revealed to a broad audience the struggles of her fellow African Americans—especially Black women—in bestsellers such as “The Bluest Eye,” “Song of Solomon,” and “Beloved.” She established her place in the New Jersey pantheon as a professor at Princeton University from 1989 until her retirement in 2006.

Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, she was the daughter of an Ohio shipyard-worker father and a homemaker mother, both of whom had roots in the Deep South. At 12, she joined the Roman Catholic Church, taking the baptismal name Anthony, which became the source of her eventual nickname, “Toni.” She was still Chloe when she entered Howard University, where she majored in English. She went on to earn a master’s in American literature from Cornell University in 1955.

In 1958, she married Harold Morrison; they had two sons together, but divorced in 1964. After the divorce, Morrison began working as an editor for Random House, where she focused on bringing Black literature to mainstream readers. Morrison’s own first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” based on her earlier short story about a Black girl who longed for blue eyes, was published to critical acclaim in 1970.

Morrison’s second novel, “Sula,” published in 1973, was nominated for the National Book Award. Next came “Song of Solomon” (1977), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Having achieved widespread recognition, Morrison left her editing job to focus on writing, but took a series of teaching positions at various institutions, including Rutgers University in New Brunswick.

“Beloved,” Morrison’s most celebrated novel, was published in 1987 and spent 25 weeks on the bestseller list. The story of an African American woman who escapes slavery, “Beloved” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. It turned out to be the first in a trilogy of novels that would include “Jazz” (1992) and “Paradise” (1997).

In 1989, Morrison joined the faculty of Princeton University, where she taught classes in the humanities and African American studies, and was a member of the creative-writing program. During her tenure at Princeton, Morrison became the first Black woman of any nationality to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2017, Princeton dedicated Morrison Hall in recognition of Morrison’s contributions to the university.

Harking back to Morrison’s first days at the university, her 2019 Princeton obituary states: “Morrison’s arrival helped to attract other faculty and students from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds to Princeton, and she played a catalytic role in expanding Princeton’s commitments both to the creative and performing arts and to African American studies.”