[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 35 (Friday, February 24, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E422]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


       SALUTE TO TONI MORRISON: NATIVE DAUGHTER AND NOBEL LAUREATE

                                 ______


                          HON. DONALD M. PAYNE

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, February 23, 1995
  Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, at the close of the 103d 
Congress, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus paused to 
salute the much celebrated Nobel Prize winner in literature, novelist 
Toni Morrison. Our colleague Carol Moseley-Braun preserved for 
posterity a fitting tribute to the life work and literary excellence of 
the Nation's most recent winner. As Howard University brings together 
on Friday, March 3, hundreds who gather to celebrate the extraordinary 
legacy of Toni Morrison; the members of the Congressional Black Caucus 
return to the words so eloquently spoken of her by Senator Moseley-
Braun.
  Ms. Morrison is the first American woman to win this signal honor in 
55 years, the third American over a period of more than two decades, 
and the only African-American ever. As an element of this historic 
backdrop, it is noted that the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy 
has selected only two other African-American Laureates since the 
inception of this momentous ceremony--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and 
U.S. Ambassador Ralph Bunche--who both were awarded the Nobel Peace 
Prize.
  Of the numerous tributes which followed the announcement of 1994's 
prize for literature, the most animated have been those of her peers. 
In the words of contemporary novelist Alice Walker: ``No one writes 
more beautifully than Toni Morrison. She has consistently explored 
issues of true complexity and terror and love in lives of African-
Americans.'' Indeed the Nobel Committee's announcement stated that 
``Ms. Morrison gives life to an essential aspect of American reality'' 
in novels ``characterized by visionary force and poetic import.''
  Calling her ``a literary artist of the first rank'' the Academy's 
statement went further to say that ``She delves into the language 
itself, a language she wants to liberate from the fetters of race. And 
she addresses us with luster of poetry.''
  A Princeton University professor, Morrison is the author of ``Song of 
Solomon'' winner of the National Book Critics Award, the Pulitzer Award 
winning ``Beloved'' published in 1987, the critically acclaimed 1992 
work entitled ``Jazz,'' along with other lyrically narrated novels on 
African-American life. The 1993-94 Nobel Laureate in Literature was 
born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorraine, OH, shortly after the onset of 
the Great Depression--the second of four children of sharecroppers and 
granddaughter of an Alabama slave. Reared in a low-income, integrated 
neighborhood, Morrison drew from this experience and the nurturing of 
her parents and inherited a gifted legacy and sense of history which 
permeates her works. Ms. Morrison, not surprisingly, learned to read at 
an early age and was the only child in her class to enter first grade 
with that skill. She would later earn a bachelor's degree in English 
from Howard University in Washington, DC, and a master's degree in 
English from Cornell University.
  Her academic career would touch both historically black colleges and 
universities including Texas Southern University in Houston, and Howard 
University, as well as New York State University campuses at Albany and 
Purchase, NY, and as a prolific essayist and playwright.
  Toni Morrison, through her creative genius and vision has shown us 
how our culture teaches us and how our past can influence our future. 
She gives us the promise of good things to those who are true to their 
cultural ancestry.
  As the chairman and on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus, I 
join in this salute to her literary excellence and inspiration. The 
tribute that is made by the establishment of an endowed chair and 
professorship in the name of her mentor and the gifted writer and 
author, Sterling Allen Brown, is an appropriate gift to the African-
American community and our Nation as a whole. Toni Morrison is indeed 
Howard's, the continent of Africa and Black America's native daughter. 
For, Mr. Speaker, in ways that few others have, Toni Morrison gives us 
inspiration to prevail in times where there is only the beauty and 
integrity of our language, our spirit, and our history to sustain us.


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