Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's Legacy Lives On In Chester County

LOWER OXFORD TOWNSHIP, PA — The benches are small, quiet, unassuming, matte black. They sit in small and quiet places all over the globe, including two corners of Lincoln University in Chester County. Passerby may sit, and not take note of anything other than a bench.

But they are not just benches. They are monuments to African-Americans legally enslaved in the United States from the moment of its founding until the Emancipation Proclamation.

There are 34 benches around the globe, and two of them are at Lincoln University. One is on the campus proper and another sits at the Hosana AUMP Church. Nearby, there's one in Collingdale in Delaware County, as well as another in Harrisburg.

They are part of the Toni Morrison Society's "Bench by the Road" project, an effort to transubstantiate the Nobel Prize-winning novelist's words into something material.

The idea for a bench to memorialize slaves came from an interview Morrison gave with The World magazine in 1989.

"There is no place you or I can go, to think about or not think about, to summon the presences of, or recollect the absences of slaves," Morrison said. "There is no suitable memorial, or plaque, or wreath, or wall, or park, or skyscraper lobby. There's no 300-foot tower, there's no small bench by the road. There is not even a tree scored, an initial that I can visit or you can visit in Charleston or Savannah or New York or Providence or better still on the banks of the Mississippi."

While there has been a national reckoning on racial justice since Morrison said that 36 years ago, the essence of her words remain true. There is no comparable monument for descendants of American slaves, certainly not in the sense that Morrison meant. But across the country, there remain thousandfold gaudy gold and bronze statues that commemorate other figures and achievements of dubious merit and morality. Rather than compete with these displays, the benches, in their understated stolidity, offer a poetic alternative.

Morrison gave that interview just after the publication of "Beloved," one of her most famous works and the winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize. The novel is based on the real life of escaped slave Margaret Garner, who attempted to kill her children to prevent them from returning to slavery.

Morrison's work was driven by a similar totemic drive embodied in the benches. She later added in that same interview about the dearth of memorials, "Because such a place doesn't exist...the book had to."

The Toni Morrison Society actively considers locations for new benches. To learn more and submit an application, see here.