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A Beloved Author

© Megan Drummond

Chloe Anthony Wofford was born on February 18, 1931 in the small industrial town of Lorain, Ohio. She was the second child of George, a shipyard welder, and Ramah Willis Wofford. Her parents had moved to Ohio to escape the racism in the South and to find better opportunities for themselves and their children. Chloe’s father was an extremely hardworking and proud man. Her mother was a church-going woman who sang in the choir. Because her parents were very proud of their heritage, Chloe heard many songs and stories of Southern black folklore.

Lorain was a town populated with immigrant Europeans, Mexicans and Southern blacks who lived and worked alongside each other. In her first grade class, Chloe was the only colored child and the only one who could read. She was friends with many of her white classmates and did not experience any discrimination until she began dating in her mid-teens. She was an excellent student and graduated from Lorain High School in 1949 with honors.

After high school, Chloe attended Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in English with a minor in classics. This is also when she changed her name. Because so many people had difficulty correctly pronouncing her first name, she changed it to Toni, a shortened version of her middle name. She joined a repertory company while at Howard and, with them, made several tours of the South. Here she experienced firsthand the life of blacks in the South and what her parents had escaped by moving north.

Toni graduated from Howard University with a BA in English in 1953 and went on to attend Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She earned her Master’s degree in 1955.

After graduating from Cornell, Toni was offered a job at Texas Southern University in Houston as a professor of introductory English. It was here, at Texas Southern’s Negro history week, that Toni learned that her heritage meant more than simple family reminiscences.

In 1957, Toni returned to Howard University as a member of the faculty. Here she met and fell in love with a young Jamaican architect named Harold Morrison. They married in 1958 and their first son was born in 1961. Toni continued teaching while helping to take care of her family. She also joined a small writer’s group as an escape from an unhappy married life. Toni wrote a short story for the group that was loosely based on a girl she had know in childhood who had prayed to God for blue eyes. The story was well received by the group and then put away by Toni, thinking that she was done with it.

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