Program

NYS Historic

Subject

People, Site

Location

513 N Albany St, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA

Lat/Long

42.443962, -76.501884

Grant Recipient

Toni Morrison Collective

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Loraine, Ohio on February 18^th, 1931. Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with her B.A. in English. She went on to live in Ithaca, NY at this home (513 N. Albany Ave.) while she worked on her master’s degree in American Literature. Her thesis was written on “Virginia Woolf’s and William Faulkner’s Treatment of the Alienated”. She graduated from Cornell University in 1955. During her time in graduate school, she began to go by her nickname, Toni. After converting to Catholicism at age 12, she took the baptismal name Anthony, leading to her nickname of Toni. After graduating from Cornell she married, taking the surname Morrison. She had two children and was divorced in 1964.

Morrison would go on to become the first Black editor for fiction at Random House in New York City during the 1960’s. While working as an editor she also wrote her own work. Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970 and gained acclaim for Song of Solomon in 1977. Song of Soloman won her the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1987, Morrison published Beloved, for which she won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize.

In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, and in 1996 she was selected for the Jefferson Lecture by the National Endowment for the Humanities. In May of 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Morrison with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

During her career, Morrison also taught at Texas Southern University, Howard University, University of Albany, Princeton University, Yale University, Rutgers University, and Bard College. She also received numerous honorary degrees from many colleges and universities.

To learn more about the life and impact of Toni Morrison, visit the National Women’s History Museum page: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/toni-morrison

Or, visit the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University’s page: https://aas.princeton.edu/people/toni-morrison