Chloe Ardelia (Wofford) Morrison (1931 - 2019)

Born 18 Feb 1931 in Lorain, Lorain, Ohio, United States

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 5 Aug 2019 at age 88 in New York City, New York County, New York, United States

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Emma MacBeath [send private message] and US Black Heritage Project WikiTree [send private message]

Toni (Wofford) Morrison is a part of US Black history. Join: US Black Heritage Project Discuss: black_heritage

Biography

Toni (Wofford) Morrison is Notable.

Toni Morrison, born Chole Ardelia Wofford, was an American novelist. She won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, a Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved in 1987, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, among many other awards and honors.

Chloe Ardelia Wofford was born on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Lorain County, Ohio as the second of four children to George Wofford, a steel worker, and Ella (Willis) Wofford.^[1][2] She recalled that:^[3]

Growing up in Lorain, my parents made all of us feel as though there were these rather extraordinary deserving people within us. I felt like an aristocrat -- or what I think an aristocrat is. I always knew we were very poor. But that was never degrading. I remember a very important lesson that my father gave me when I was 12 or 13. He said, "You know, today I welded a perfect seam and I signed my name to it." And I said, "But, Daddy, no one's going to see it!" And he said, "Yeah, but I know it's there."

At the age of 12 she became a Catholic and took the baptismal name Anthony (after Saint Anthony), which led to her nickname, Toni, that she later used in her professional life.^[4]

She graduated from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1953 and earned her Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955.^[5][2]

While teaching at Howard University, she met Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect, whom she married in 1958. She was pregnant with their second son when they divorced in 1964.^[6][7] She left Washington and moved to New York with her sons. Raising them alone was not easy, but she drew strength from stories about the difficulties her grandmother Ardelia (McTear) Willis had faced:^[3]

In New York, whenever things got difficult I thought about my mother's mother, a sharecropper, who, with her husband, owed money to their landlord. In 1906, she escaped with her seven children to meet her husband in Birmingham, where he was working as a musician. It was a dangerous trip, but she wanted a better life. Whenever things seemed difficult for me in New York, I thought that what I was doing wasn't anything as hard as what she did.

In 1965 she started to work as an editor for a textbook division of Random House, and two years later transferred to their fiction department as their first black female senior editor. As she held this position she worked on one of her first books, Contemporary African Literature.

She was an American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor emeritus at Princeton University.

Winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison wrote 11 novels, nine non-fiction works, five children's books, two short stories, and two plays throughout her 88 years of life.

Toni Morrison passed away on August 5, 2019 in New York City.^[7][8]

Sources

1. ↑ "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KWF2-D2Q : 29 July 2019), Chloe Wofford in household of George Wofford, Ward 3, Lorain City, Black River Township, Lorain, Ohio, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 47-18, sheet 2A, line 6, family 28, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 3101.
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} Joe Wilensky, "Literary icon Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, dies at 88," Cornell Chronicle, 6 Aug 2019, https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/08/literary-icon-toni-morrison-ma-55-dies-88 : accessed 24 Jun 2022.
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Claudia Dreifus, "CHLOE WOFFORD Talks About TONI MORRISON," The New York Times, 11 Sep 1994, section 6, page 73; digitized at https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/11/magazine/chloe-wofford-talks-about-toni-morrison.html : accessed 25 Jun 2022.
4. ↑ Nick Ripatrazone, "On the Paradoxes of Toni Morrison’s Catholicism, " Literary Hub, 2 Mar 2020, https://lithub.com/on-the-paradoxes-of-toni-morrisons-catholicism/
5. ↑ "United States Census, 1950," ED 1-1115, Washington, D.C., USA; Truth Hall, Women's Dormitory, Howard University; sheet 7, Chloe Wofford, line 10; Ancestry Sharing Link, Ancestry Record 62308 #15725071 (requires subscription; accessed 25 June 2022).
6. ↑ Toni Morrison Fast Facts at CNN Library
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} Thomas Curwen, "'Beloved' writer pushed imagination," Toni Morrison obituary, The Los Angeles Times [California], 7 Aug 2019, page A1 & A8; image copy, Newspapers.com, (page 1 and page A8 : accessed 25 Jun 2022).
8. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #201875354 for Toni Morrison, b: 18 Feb 1931 Lorain, Lorain County, Ohio, USA; d: 05 Aug 2019 Bronx, Bronx County, New York, USA; with personal photo.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
• 12 Groundbreaking Toni Morrison Books to Read Right Now
• Wikidata: Item Q72334, en:Wikipedia