The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, choosing her nickname Toni later in life, after Saint Anthony. She grew up in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio, where poverty was ingrained in Black and white communities equally. Segregation, however, wasn't something she experienced as a child, New York Magazine has reported.

Her parents, Ramah, and George, had experienced racism, and her father was particularly wary of white people to the extent that he wouldn't let them in their family home. After many years of personal and systemic racism, including observing lynchings as a teenager, he thought white people were like "Nazis — true demons." Her mother, on the other hand, didn't see all white people as a united group, she divided them according to their actions. Nevertheless, she always fought against any kind of segregation, as an individual refusing to move. As Morrison recalled for The Guardian, they both taught her a great deal about being proud of who you are and not feeling less worthy due to her skin color.

But, as she told Zia Jaffrey for Salon, raising two sons on her own was hard, and she wasn't sure if she communicated racism to them correctly. Morrison always saw racists as "intellectually and emotionally deficient" individuals, and as a woman, she learned how to ignore them from a young age. Men feel and experience racism differently, and she couldn't protect them from that.