Editing Toni Morrison (section)

=== Adulthood, Howard and Cornell years, and editing career: 1949–1975 ===
In 1949, she enrolled at [[Howard University]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], seeking the company of fellow Black intellectuals.<ref name=":9">{{cite news|url=http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/i-didnt-want-to-come-back-toni-morrison-on-life-death-and-desdemona-20150803-giqaxu.html|title='I didn't want to come back': Toni Morrison on life, death and Desdemona|last=Cummings|first=Pip|date=August 7, 2015|newspaper=[[The Sydney Morning Herald]]|access-date=May 3, 2017}}</ref> She was the first person in her family to attend college, meaning that she was a [[First-generation college students in the United States|first-generation college student]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Toni Morrison: Toni Morrison: Biographical Note |url=https://scalar.lehigh.edu/toni-morrison/toni-morrison-biographical-note |access-date=2024-10-28 |website=Toni Morrison: A Teaching and Learning Resource Collection |language=en}}</ref> Initially a student in the drama program at Howard, she studied theatre with celebrated drama teachers [[Anne Cooke Reid]] and [[Owen Dodson]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Toni Morrison: Memory and Meaning|editor=Adrienne Lanier Seward, Justine Tally|publisher=[[University Press of Mississippi]]|isbn=9781626742048|first=Dana A. |last=Williams|chapter=To Make A Humanist Black: Toni Wofford's Howard Years|date=August 12, 2014 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7v4aBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT43}}</ref> It was while at Howard that she encountered [[Racial segregation in the United States|racially segregated]] restaurants and buses for the first time.<ref name=Ghansah /> She graduated in 1953 with a B.A. in English and a minor in Classics, and was able to work with key members of the Harlem Renaissance era such as [[Alain LeRoy Locke|Alain Locke]] and [[Sterling Allen Brown|Sterling Brown]]. Additionally, she participated in the university's theater group, known as the Howard Players, where she had the opportunity to travel the Deep South, which was a defining experience of her life.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Roynon |first=Tessa |title=The Cambridge introduction to Toni Morrison |date=2013 |publisher=Cambridge University press |isbn=978-1-107-00391-0 |series=Cambridge introductions to literature |location=Cambridge}}</ref>

Morrison went on to earn a Master of Arts degree in 1955 from [[Cornell University]] in [[Ithaca, New York|Ithaca]], New York.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Wilensky|first=Joe|date=August 6, 2019|title=Literary icon Toni Morrison, M.A. '55, dies at 88|url=https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/08/literary-icon-toni-morrison-ma-55-dies-88|access-date=December 13, 2019|website=[[Cornell Chronicle]]|language=en}}</ref> Her master's thesis was titled "[[Virginia Woolf]]'s and [[William Faulkner]]'s treatment of the alienated".<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Wofford|first1=Chloe Ardellia|title=Virginia Woolf's and William Faulkner's Treatment of the Alienated|date=September 1955|url=https://newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/1152836|publisher=Cornell University|access-date=March 5, 2016}}</ref> She taught English, first at [[Texas Southern University]] in [[Houston]] from 1955 to 1957, and then at Howard University for the next seven years. While teaching at Howard, she met Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect, whom she married in 1958. Their first son was born in 1961 and she was pregnant with their second son when she and Harold divorced in 1964.<ref name="Mote" /><ref name=":2">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/25/toni-morrison-books-interview-god-help-the-child|title=Toni Morrison: 'I'm writing for black people&nbsp;... I don't have to apologize'|last=Hoby|first=Hermione|author-link=Hermione Hoby|date=April 25, 2015|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref><ref name="auto">{{cite book |last=Gillespie |first=Carmen |title=Critical Companion to Toni Morrison: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work |publisher=Infobase Publishing |year=2007 |isbn=978-1438108575 |page=6}}</ref>

After her divorce and the birth of her son Slade in 1965, Morrison began working as an editor for L. W. Singer, a textbook division of publisher [[Random House]],<ref name=":7" /> in [[Syracuse, New York|Syracuse]], New York. Two years later, she transferred to Random House in New York City, where she became their first Black woman senior editor in the fiction department.<ref name="ReferenceA">[http://www.biography.com/people/toni-morrison-9415590 "Toni Morrison Biography"], Bio.com, April 2, 2014. Retrieved October 31, 2015.</ref><ref name="nobel">{{cite news |last=Grimes |first= William |title=Toni Morrison Is '93 Winner of Nobel Prize in Literature |newspaper=The New York Times |date=October 8, 1993 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/28957.html |access-date =June 11, 2007}}</ref>

In that capacity, Morrison played a vital role in bringing [[African-American literature|Black literature]] into the mainstream. One of the first books she worked on was the groundbreaking ''Contemporary African Literature'' (1972), a collection that included work by Nigerian writers [[Wole Soyinka]], [[Chinua Achebe]], and South African playwright [[Athol Fugard]].<ref name=":7" /> She fostered a new generation of Afro-American writers,<ref name=":7" /> including poet and novelist [[Toni Cade Bambara]], radical activist [[Angela Davis]], [[Black Panther Party|Black Panther]] [[Huey P. Newton|Huey Newton]]<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-07/toni-morrison-nobel-prize-winning-author-dies-at-88/11390016|title=Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison dies at 88|date=August 7, 2019|website=ABC News|access-date=August 7, 2019}}</ref> and novelist [[Gayl Jones]], whose writing Morrison discovered. She also brought to publication the 1975 [[autobiography]] of the outspoken boxing champion [[Muhammad Ali]], ''[[The Greatest: My Own Story]]''. In addition, she published and promoted the work of [[Henry Dumas]],<ref>{{cite journal | last=Morrison | first=Toni | jstor=2904523 | title=On behalf of Henry Dumas | journal=[[Black American Literature Forum]] | volume=22 | issue=2 | date=Summer 1988 | pages=310–312 | doi=10.2307/2904523 | issn=0148-6179 }}</ref> a little-known novelist and poet who in 1968 had been shot to death by a transit officer in the [[New York City Subway]].<ref name=Ghansah /><ref name="paradise">{{cite news| last = Verdelle| first = A. J. | title = Paradise found: a talk with Toni Morrison about her new novel – Nobel Laureate's new book, 'Paradise' – Interview| magazine = [[Essence (magazine)|Essence]]| date = February 1998| url= http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1264/is_n10_v28/ai_20187690/pg_2| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130811053111/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1264/is_n10_v28/ai_20187690/pg_2| url-status = dead| archive-date = August 11, 2013| access-date =June 11, 2007 | df=mdy-all }}</ref>

Among other books that Morrison developed and edited is ''[[The Black Book (Morrison book)|The Black Book]]'' (1974), an anthology of photographs, illustrations, essays, and documents of Black life in the United States from the time of slavery to the 1920s.<ref name=Ghansah /> Random House had been uncertain about the project but its publication met with a good reception. Alvin Beam reviewed the anthology for the [[Cleveland]] ''[[The Plain Dealer|Plain Dealer]]'', writing: "Editors, like novelists, have brain children{{snd}}books they think up and bring to life without putting their own names on the title page. Mrs. Morrison has one of these in the stores now, and magazines and newsletters in the publishing trade are ecstatic, saying it will go like hotcakes."<ref name=":7" />