Toni Morrison
Morrison’s legacy is the youngest of all the ones examined in this project. However, that doesn’t mean she and her legacy don’t have a prominent place on the Princeton campus.
Morrison’s Life, Briefly
Toni Morrison, or Chloe Anthony Wofford, was born February 18th, 1931 in Ohio. She was a Black American writer who was beloved for her analysis of the Black experience through her life and in her reflective novels. She attended Howard University, graduating in 1953, and earned her masters from Cornell in 1955. Her professional career began as a professor at Howard University as well as the State University of New York, Albany. After releasing hit works like The Bluest Eye and Beloved she received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. Morrison had joined the Princeton faculty as an esteemed professor a few years earlier in 1989. Today, Morrison is remembered for her work in expanding Princeton’s commitment to the arts as well as attracting members of underrepresented communities to Princeton’s campus.
Speak Your Truth Toni (Podcast Edition)
A different take on what a personal document can be, this podcast episode that features Toni Morrison has an accompanying transcript that emphasizes regrets that Morrison had towards the end of her career. She does not consider this regret substantial, but still thinks of it as noticing the “tiny little messes that you didn’t recognize as mess when they were going on.” Relatable in every way you hear it, this podcast allows for a famous novelist, who always had a broad message, to be shown in a different light. No matter where you are in life and what message you have spent your life’s work conveying, there will always be the messy and the regretted things that you can’t quite place.
A Young Legacy
Soon after Morrison died in 2019, The Daily Princetonian published two obituaries for her. She was remembered, of course, for her contributions to and achievements in literature, and she was also remembered for her impact on the university. On that end, the obituaries describe her as a leader in creative writing and African American studies at Princeton alongside her work to create the Princeton Atelier program. As the individual in this project to have most recently lived and died, there still isn’t too much of a post-death legacy to study. This is meant only in length of time and not in the magnitude of her legacy, since those who were quoted in the obituaries described Morrison as a huge figure both at Princeton and beyond.
However, Morrison’s relatively young legacy doesn’t mean she isn’t prominently honored on the Princeton campus. In 2017, two years before Morrison’s death, the university renamed West College in her honor, dedicating it as Morrison Hall (marked on this project’s Story Map and picture above). Morrison Hall is one of the oldest buildings on the campus, houses the Office of the Dean of the College, and stands at a prominent location just south of Nassau Hall. This all helps to indicate the scale at which Morrison’s legacy is honored at Princeton. Furthermore, at the dedication ceremony, Morrison was hailed by President Christopher Eisgruber for gracing the campus “with the highest imaginable levels of achievement and distinction” and for having “helped Princeton to become the increasingly imaginative and inclusive institution that we know today.”
And then, speaking about Morrison but also reaching at the greater role of legacies on the Princeton campus, Eisgruber continued: “Her name will matter here because names matter to how we understand history, and how we understand history matters to how we understand ourselves and our community.”
Further Resources
“1836: West College (Morrison Hall) - Princetoniana Museum.” Link.
NPR.org. “‘I Regret Everything’: Toni Morrison Looks Back On Her Personal Life.” January 22, 2016. Link.
Princeton University. “Princeton Dedicates Morrison Hall in Honor of Nobel Laureate and Emeritus Faculty Member Toni Morrison,” November 20, 2017. Link.
Shen, Allan. “‘Beloved’ Author and U. Professor Toni Morrison Dies at 88.” The Princetonian, August 6, 2019. Link.
Tam, Katie. “‘Beloved’ Author and U. Professor Toni Morrison Dies at 88.” The Princetonian, September 12, 2019. Link.
Encyclopedia Britannica. “Toni Morrison - Biography, Books, & Facts.” Link.
Princeton University. “Toni Morrison, Nobel-Winning Author and Emeritus Princeton Faculty Member, Dies at 88,” August 6, 2019. Link.