Why Women’s History Month?
Women’s History Month began as a local celebration in Santa Rosa, California, in 1978. It was originally called “Women’s History Week,” and it grew into a national movement. By 1980, President Jimmy Carter issued the first presidential proclamation recognizing National Women’s History Week, and in 1987, Congress designated March that year as Women’s History Month. Since then, it has served as both a celebration and an opportunity to address the historical exclusion of women’s voices from textbooks, institutions and public memory.
Toni Morrison’s Legacy
Women’s History Month challenges people to expand their understanding of leadership, creativity, resistance and resilience. The author Toni Morrison embodies that challenge powerfully. Through novels such as Beloved, The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon, Morrison centered Black women’s experiences in ways American literature long neglected. Her work insisted that the inner lives of Black women and their grief, love, trauma, memory and joy were not peripheral stories, but foundational to understanding the American narrative.
Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, in 1931. She attended Howard University and obtained a master’s degree from Cornell University. She was the first Black woman to hold a senior editor position at Random House and earned numerous literary awards, including becoming the first Black woman to earn the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Statewide and Campus Celebrations
Through Feb. 18, 2027, Morrison is being honored with a statewide, yearlong celebration designed and led by Literary Cleveland with Ohio Humanities, the Ohioana Library Association and the Toni Morrison Society. The University of Dayton’s Women's Center is hosting a trip to Lorain for students to learn more about her work. For other campus Women’s History Month events, visit the Women’s Center website on Porches (UD login required).
Check out the Women’s History Month book display in Roesch Library’s lobby and borrow a book by Toni Morrison from Roesch or your local library: