Howard University Establishing An Endowed Chair In Honor Of Toni Morrison

Howard University, a leading private Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in Washington, D.C., is establishing an endowed faculty chair to honor Toni Morrison, one of its most famous and highly decorated alums.

The announcement, made on February 10, indicated that the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities would be funded using $3 million from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott’s $40 million gift to the University. That gift, made in 2020, is the largest single private donation in Howard’s history. 

There is notable symmetry in the Morrison Chair being funded by Mackenzie Scott’s gift. As an undergraduate Scott studied creative writing under Morrison at Princeton. And when Scott’s first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, won an American Book Award,  Morrison praised the book as “a rarity: a sophisticated novel that breaks and swells the heart”.

“It is with great honor that we establish the Toni Morrison Endowed Chair in Arts and Humanities,” said President Wayne A. I. Frederick. “Toni Morrison left her mark as one of the greatest figures in American literature, and her legacy is one that continues to inspire future generations of writers and thinkers. By establishing an endowed chair in her name, we hope to deepen our students’ exposure to literary and other creative arts and to continue to remember Ms. Morrison’s legacy.”

Howard indicated that it will award the Toni Morrison Chair to a distinguished faculty member, who is recognized as a national and international leader in his or her field of scholarship or creative work. The University said it “will seek a chair holder whose prestige and ongoing impactful scholarship will help to elevate Howard University’s scholarship and creative work across the arts and humanities.” 

In addition, the holder of the Toni Morrison Chair in Arts and Humanities will be expected to work with other Howard faculty to oversee the development of an Arts & Humanities Leadership Laboratory. The laboratory will be tasked with bringing to bear various academic disciplines on the major social issues facing the nation and preparing future alums for leadership roles in an increasingly diverse America. 

Born in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a BA in English. She then earned her Master’s’ degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955.

Among her many awards, Morrison won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon (1977) and the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987). She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983. Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2012.

Morrison began a teaching career after finishing her graduate degree. She first taught English at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas before returning to Howard to to teach in its Department of English for several years.

Later in her life she joined the faculty at Princeton University, where from 1989 until her retirement in 2006, she held the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities. At Princeton, she began the Princeton Atelier, a program that fosters collaboration between students and writers and other performing artists. She later returned to Princeton to lead a seminar entitled “The Foreigner’s Home” in 2008. In 2017, Princeton dedicated Morrison Hall (formerly West College) in her honor.

Toni Morrison died from complications of pneumonia in August, 2019.