Lorain High School Yearbook Photo

She was born Chloe Anthony Wofford but her family nicknamed her Toni. In 1959 she married a man named Harold Morrison, who she divorced in 1964. The book editor she worked with for her first book, 'The Bluest Eye' only knew her as Toni. When the book came out she was upset because they put her nickname on the cover, 'Toni' Morrison. The book gained so much fame that she decided to stick with her new moniker.

Chloe Wofford was born in Lorain, Ohio on February 18, 1931. She graduated with honors from Lorain High School and earned a bachelor's degree in English at Howard University. It was during her time at Howard University that she changed her name to Toni Morrison. In 1955, she received her master's degree in English from Cornell University. In 1970, her first novel, 'The Bluest Eye,' was published. Her fifth novel, 'Beloved,' received the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 1988. Morrison received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993.

She died on Monday, August 5, 2019 at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, according to her publisher, Penguin Random House. Morrison's family, in a statement released by the publisher, said she died "following a short illness" and surrounded by loved ones.

Ohio Historical Society; NPR