Historical marker commemorates Toni Morrison’s time in Ithaca

Ithaca's north side has been a formative place for American history.

Within a few blocks: 212 Cascadilla St. was the birthplace of "Roots" author Alex Haley and the childhood home of Tuskegee Airman Verdelle Louis Payne; the idea for Alpha Phi Alpha, the nation's first Black fraternity, was hatched at 421 N. Albany St.; and Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison, M.A. '55, lived upstairs at 513 N. Albany St. during the first year of her master's program at Cornell.

On Feb. 19, Cornell faculty, staff, students and community members celebrated Morrison's 95th birthday by unveiling a new historical marker in front of that Albany Street house and hosting a celebration at the Greater Ithaca Activities Center (GIAC).

The marker reads:

Toni Morrison

AKA Chloe Wofford, 1931-2019. M.A. Cornell University 1955. Nobel Prize in Literature, 1993. Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2012. Lived here.

The marker project was spearheaded by the Toni Morrison Collective, a group of Cornell faculty and librarians dedicated to preserving Morrison's legacy at Cornell.

"This marker reminds Ithaca in perpetuity of the space it shares with Toni Morrison," said Anne Adams,professor emerita of Africana studies and comparative literature in the College of Arts and Sciences, and chair of the collective. "It allows us to conjure Morrison at 513 (N. Albany St.) and wonder whether something of Ithaca might have seeped into her work. For example, for those familiar with her novel 'Paradise,' maybe we could claim that the Calvary Baptist Church that plays such a critical role in that novel might have been inspired by the Calvary Baptist Church right next to her in Ithaca."

Since its inception in 2020, the Morrison collective has distributed Morrison's books throughout the Ithaca community, held community discussions, hosted academic conferences and sponsored films, plays and readings.

Margaret Washington, professor emerita in the history department (A&S) and another collective member, wrote the grant and managed the process for the marker's installation. Historical markers such as this one are funded and approved by the Pomeroy Foundation.

"Morrison has been a mainstay of my courses, even though I'm a historian," Washington said. "I found Toni Morrison to be just as much of a historian as she is a literary genius."

Kaleb Hunkele, MFA '18, and his family own the house at 513 N. Albany St., but they didn't know of its connection to Morrison until he was approached by members of the collective.

"I can't imagine a better house or neighborhood to have raised my son," Hunkele said. "He was surrounded by a supportive, engaged community that helped shape him into the thoughtful man he is today. And because of that, it's easy and fun to imagine how living there could have helped shaped Toni Morrison into the profound literary and cultural force she became."

Community members joined in the celebration, including Cal Walker, founder of the Village at Ithaca and the lead collaborator from Calvary Baptist Church for the collective's Morrison book giveaway project.

"She told us that if there is a book we want to read but it has not yet been written, then we must write it," Walker said. "She wrote us into permanence, she centered the interior lives of Black women and made the world reckon with our collective humanity, our trauma, our beauty and our complexity … Through her life she taught us that our stories are sacred."

Leslyn McBean-Clairborne, GIAC director, read a poem she wrote, composed of the titles of Morrison's 11 novels, to commemorate the day, which ended with: "Today, and into the future, this marker will stand, but her words will still move. River, song, testimony, truth. May we bravely remember deeply and see one another in the light she left behind."

Kathy Hovis is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.