Toni Morrison, Legacy, and the Work of Memory: A Gathering at Bison at Basel

By Chad Eric Smith, Director of Marketing and Communications, Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts

Featured Image: Dana A. Williams, Ph.D., and Khalid Y. Long, Ph.D. Photo by Chad Eric Smith. 

On Friday afternoon, inside the Center for Black Innovation in Miami’s historic Overtown neighborhood, something meaningful happened. It wasn’t simply a book talk, and it wasn’t just another stop on the Bison at Basel schedule. It was a convergence of scholarship, memory, community, and Black creative lineage sharing the same breath.

Guests gathered for a conversation with Dana A. Williams, Ph.D., dean of the Howard University Graduate School and author of Toni at Random, a revelatory new exploration of Toni Morrison’s transformative and often overlooked work as an editor at Random House, one of the nation’s most prestigious publishing houses.

Grounded in deep research and firsthand testimony, the book traces Morrison’s path from her early years at Random House to her rise as one of its most influential editors. During her tenure, she reshaped the publishing landscape, championing writers such as Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest, and Lucille Clifton, and ensuring that cultural figures like Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali were able to share their stories with honesty, dignity, and autonomy.

Moderated by Khalid Y. Long, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Research and Creative Endeavors at Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, the discussion unfolded with the warmth of community and the rigor of scholarship, the kind of exchange where history feels both intimate and alive.

Before the program began, Philip Agnew of Roots Bookstore and Market grounded the moment in place and purpose. With humor and seriousness intertwined, he declared:

This is a city, a state, a country that bans books. So we have a number of books here that you won’t find other places… We are happy you all are here, but I want to remind you: we are in a fight for our lives. We are in a fight for the spirit and soul of our people and of this country.

Agnew reminded the audience that, in the midst of Black joy, reverence, and artistry taking place at and parallel to Art Basel, we were all existing in a state where truth, history, curriculum, identity, and language are contested territory. Thus, the gathering was more than an event; it was a statement.

A Legacy That Extends Beyond Authorship

Once the conversation began, Dr. Long opened with a moment from the book — a passage that captured the magnitude of Morrison’s editorial influence:

A good writer, in Morrison’s view, could show the foolishness of racism without talking to or about white people at all…proof that a Black writer could write about Black life with no regard for the white gaze.

Dr. Long then shared an anecdote. Holding the book in an airport, he recalled a stranger staring at the cover before asking:

“Is that Toni Morrison?”

He smiled, replied, “Yes,” and began to explain that the author is a Howard colleague whom he has admired for some time.

Moments later, the woman confessed:

“I never knew Toni Morrison was an editor.”

Dr. Long paused, then turned to the audience:

In that moment, I realized the significance of this book. This work makes visible what many never knew and what history never properly accounted for.

Research, Apprenticeship, and the Quiet Work of Legacy

Dean Williams shared the journey behind the book — a path shaped by archives, scholarship, and personal conversation with Morrison herself.

She recounted one early moment of discovery:

I was in a graduate seminar, and we were reading Henry Dumas, Gayl Jones, Leon Forrest, Toni Cade Bambara… and I asked my professor, ‘Why these books?’ She said, casually — ‘Oh, those are the books Toni edited at Random House.’ And I said — ‘Wait — what?

That moment became a thesis. Then a dissertation attempt. Eventually, a book.

Williams also shared memories of interviewing Morrison, sessions that sometimes felt like storytelling marathons where Morrison would speak freely, but sparingly on the topic Williams thought she was there to discuss:

I would ask, ‘Tell me about editing Gayl Jones.’ And she’d say, ‘Gayl was easy.’ Then she would talk for twenty minutes about Muhammad Ali.

The room laughed, not because the moment was just funny, but because there seemed to be a shared understanding that it was true. Morrison mentored by gesture, rhythm, and timing, not by roadmap.

Williams continued:

At one point, she said, ‘Don’t worry — we’ll talk about the fiction.’ I left thinking: there will be a next time

There was.

And each conversation, whether formal or in passing, deepened the work and widened the frame.

A Blueprint for Black Publishing

One of the most resonant insights of the afternoon was Williams’s claim that:

Absent Toni Morrison’s editorship, we do not see the boom in Black women’s fiction in the 1980s. We just don’t.

Her remarks highlighted not only Morrison’s literary genius, but also her strategic intervention in the publishing industry, amplifying, advancing, and protecting voices that might never have reached readers without her advocacy.

Morrison didn’t just edit manuscripts; she shaped the conditions for Black literature to flourish. 

A Gathering That Was More Than a Gathering

As attendees lined up afterward to purchase books, exchange reflections, and meet Dean Williams, there was a shared understanding that something important had taken place.

This wasn’t just a stop on an event schedule.

It was a reminder:

We inherit a cultural lineage that requires tending, not just celebration.

This event embodied what Bison at Basel aspires to activate, moments where Howard scholarship meets community, where intellectual inquiry coexists with lived history, and where artistry meets legacy.

Such is the time for art.

Such is the time for truth.

Such is the time to keep the legacy alive.