Toni Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on this day in 1931, was an American writer, public intellectual, and educator, author of "Beloved", "Song of Solomon", and "The Bluest Eye".

Morrison was born to a working class black family in Lorain, Ohio. Her father had moved to the integrated town in order to flee white supremacist violence in Georgia. When Morrison was two years old, her landlord set the family's home on fire while they were inside because they could not pay their rent.

Morrison graduated from both Howard and Cornell University, earning a B.A. in English and Master of Arts respectively. After working for several years as an English professor, Morrison was hired as an editor by Random House in New York City, where she became their first black woman senior editor in the fiction department.

In this capacity, Morrison worked to bring black literature into the mainstream, editing and promoting the writing of authors such as Angela Davis, Huey Newton, Muhammad Ali, Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, Nigerian writers Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe, and South African playwright Athol Fugard.

In 1970, Morrison's novel "The Bluest Eye" was published to popular acclaim. Other works by Morrison include "Beloved" (1987), for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, and "Song of Solomon" (1977).

In 2008, Morrison endorsed Barack Obama in his campaign for the American presidency. When Obama won, Morrison said she felt like an American for the first time, and that "I felt very powerfully patriotic when I went to the inauguration of Barack Obama. I felt like a kid."

"Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

- Toni Morrison