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John, I wanted to take a few moments to remember the late, great, Black novelist Toni Morrison, who would have been 93 years old this week.

The author of The Bluest Eye , Song of Solomon , and Beloved , among several other classic works, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Morrison gave a new language to the Black experience in America, doing so with tremendous emotion, grace, and tenderness — in so becoming a legendary figure and fixture on English literature curricula.

I remember meeting Toni Morrison when I had the chance to introduce her at a Rutgers-Newark student event when I was mayor of Newark in 2011.

I reflected on reading her novels during my Rhodes scholarship studies at Oxford in England. I called her one of my living heroes, and told the assembled students, “Toni Morrison’s work breaks up the soil of the soul. It helps to open us to light, to heat, to nourishing rain. It helps us to grow.”

Seeing President Obama present her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the next year, I remember feeling such tremendous pride seeing this HBCU graduate be honored by our first Black president.

President Obama said that Morrison’s voice “fundamentally changed [his] perspective on the world.”

Toni Morrison had a marked impact on so many. For me, that impact included her quote, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” As an author, that’s what she did. As a U.S. senator, it’s what I strive for with every piece of legislation I write and vote I take.

There is little doubt that Toni Morrison would have many more insights to share in the time since her passing. From the largest movement for justice in the modern history of this country in 2020 to school districts banning The Bluest Eye and her other works from their curricula, we are still facing a reckoning for the kind of country we will ultimately be.

But we know this: Morrison once called anger “a paralyzing emotion…you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling — I don’t think it’s any of that — it’s helpless…it’s absence of control — and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers…and anger doesn’t provide any of that — I have no use for it whatsoever.”

As our political discourse often seems angrier than ever, I have often returned to those words Morrison shared.

Let us replace anger with love. The kind of love, Morrison wrote in Jazz , where “I didn’t fall in love, I rose in it. ”

Thanks for giving me the opportunity this Black History Month to share more stories of incredible Americans like Toni Morrison with you.

With love and gratitude,

Cory

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