Toni Morrison, First Black Nobel Prize Winner in Literature

The first Black Woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature was born Chloe Anthony Wofford, later known as Toni Morrison on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, U.S.A.

Toni was the second oldest of four children of George Wofford, a shipyard welder and Ramah Willis Wofford. The Wofford family moved from the South, to Ohio, to escape racism and to search for better opportunities in the North.

Her father worked three jobs for almost 17 years, especially taking pride in the quality of his work by leaving his signature on the side of the ship. He was a well-dressed man during the depression, and his wife was a church going woman who sang in the choir. Toni grew up proud to hear of the many songs and tales of Southern Black folklore.

Lorain was populated with immigrant Europeans, Mexicans and Southern blacks, in this industrial town she attended an integrated school. She was the only black student in her first grade class who could read, and being friends with many of her white schoolmates, did not encounter discrimination until she started dating. She was an excellent student and graduated with honors from Lorain High School in 1949.

Chloe Wofford attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., and majored in English with a minor in classics. This is when she changed her name to Toni, a shortened version of her middle name since many people didn’t pronounce her name properly.

Toni joined a repertory company, the Howard University Players, and made several tours to the South. She saw the life firsthand her parents had escaped from, by moving north.

In 1953 she graduated from Howard University with a B.A. in English. In 1955 she received a master’s degree when she attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Toni’s first job after graduation was teaching introductory English at Texas Southern University in Houston. At Texas Southern they had a ‘Negro history week’ this is where the idea of black culture as a discipline arose, rather than just family reminiscences.

In 1957 she returned to Howard University as a member of faculty. During the civil rights movement she met several people who were active in the struggle, the poet, Amiri Baraka( LeRoi Jones), and Andrew Young, who became mayor of Atlanta, Georgia. One of her students was Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Claude Brown, another of her students wrote Manchild in the Promised Land, it became a classic of African-American literature.