The First Solution

"The First Solution" is a speech delivered by novelist Toni Morrison at Howard University on March 3, 1995, in Washington, D.C. The speech was given at the university on the occasion of the 128th anniversary of its Charter Day. The address serves to celebrate the legacy of Howard University and their achievements, but Morrison spends the middle part of the speech also discussing racism and fascism in the United States. An excerpt was later published as a separate essay titled "Racism and Fascism".

Background

Toni Morrison in New York (n.d.) (Bernard Gotfryd)

Novelist Toni Morrison, a member of the Class of 1953 and a former instructor at Howard University in 1957, was the keynote speaker at Howard on March 3, 1995. At the time, she was 64 years old[1] and the Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University.[2] The event commemorated the 128th anniversary of its Charter Day, observed the previous day, March 2. Prior to her speech, the school was led in prayer by Dean of the Chapel Bernard Richardson, whose theme focused on how adversity builds strength and resilience. This was followed by an introduction and welcome to Charter Day by Interim President Joyce Ladner,[3] the first woman to hold the position at Howard.[4]

The university choir then performed selections from Messiah (1741) by George Frideric Handel with live orchestral accompaniment. Ladner followed up with an announcement of six awards for distinguished Howardites. Board of trustees and Chairman Wayman Smith then joined Ladner to award Morrison an honorary Doctorate of Letters. She then delivered a 22 minute[3] convocation speech[1] which was filmed by C-SPAN.[3] The speech was titled "The First Solution".[5] The title alludes to the creeping and incremental nature of racism and fascism that leads to an outcome like the Final Solution, the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jewish people.[1] "Let us be reminded", Morrison writes, "That before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another."[1]

Speech

Morrison begins by recognizing Howard University for breaking the prevailing barriers of education for African Americans in the 19th century, fighting against racism, discrimination and segregation in the 20th century, leading the early civil rights movement, and contributing to her development as a novelist. Morrison then launches into what she describes as a kind of "scenario" or thought experiment framed by the same struggles and travails of the past, but updated for 1995. She introduces this idea as a series of ten steps that shows how racism builds up to fascism, one step at a time. At the end of the ten steps, Morrison notes that fascism may arrive under any name or political party.

Essay

An excerpt from the speech was published as a separate essay titled "Racism and Fascism".[6] It appeared in both The Nation[7] and in The Journal of Negro Education that same year,[2] and later in the compilation The Source of Self-Regard (2019), also known as Mouth Full of Blood in the UK.[8]

Reception

David Streitfeld of The Washington Post called the speech a "call to arms", noting that Morrison alluded to the controversy over The Bell Curve (1994).[1] The book has been accused by critics of promoting scientific racism,[9] an idea that Morrison addresses in step seven of the incremental step towards fascism: "Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology."[2]

Streitfeld described the crowd's response to the speech as "muted",[1] but Morrison's comments about Coca-Cola during the speech were enthusiastically received by the audience to the point that she had to stop speaking:[3] "Conservative, moderate, liberal; right, left, hard left, far right; religious, secular, socialist — we must not be blindsided by these Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola labels because the genius of fascism is that any political structure can host the virus and virtually any developed country can become a suitable home. Fascism talks ideology, but it is really just marketing — marketing for power."[3] Philosopher Jason Stanley, who writes widely about the rise of propaganda and fascism around the world, describes Morrison's 1995 speech as prescient in its scope, and its concern with the normalization of fascism as one which has become more relevant than ever in the 2020s.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f Streitfeld, David (March 4, 1995). "Howard's Beloved Graduate". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 23, 2025.
  2. ^ a b c Morrison, Toni (Summer 1995). "Racism and Fascism". The Journal of Negro Education. 64 (3): 384–85. (subscription required).
  3. ^ a b c d e Morrison, Toni (March 3, 1995). "Howard University 128th Anniversary". Howard University. C-SPAN. Event occurs from 37:00–59:10. Retrieved July 23, 2025.
  4. ^ Sainten, Tamryn (December 21, 2023). "Joyce Ladner, Howard's First Female President, Reflects on Black Sociology". Howard University News Service. Department of Media, Journalism and Film at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications. Howard University. Retrieved July 23, 2025.
  5. ^ "Toni Morrison papers". Speeches and Lectures, 1975 May 30-2015 October 1. "The First Solution", 1995 March 3. Description: Delivered at Howard University. Box 297 Folder 17. Princeton University Library Finding Aids. Princeton University. Retrieved July 23, 2025.
  6. ^ Williams, Dana A. (2025). "Toni Morrison". In Jipguep-Akhtar, Marie-Claude; Khan, Nazneen (eds.). Fifty Key Scholars in Black Social Thought. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 265–267. doi:10.4324/9781003315063-54. ISBN 9781032324395. OCLC 1435895391.
  7. ^ Morrison, Toni (May 29, 1995). "Racism and Fascism". The Nation. 260 (21): 760. ISSN 0027-8378.
  8. ^ Morrison, Toni (2019). The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 14-16, 353. ISBN 9780525521037. OCLC 1035802641.
  9. ^ Rosenthal, Steven J. (1995). "The Pioneer Fund: Financier of Fascist Research". American Behavioral Scientist. 39 (1): 44–61. ISSN 0002-7642. (subscription required). Quote: Many citations used in The Bell Curve to provide a pseudoscientific veneer for Herrnstein and Murray's academic version of The Turner Diaries for the "cognitive elite" came from advocates of eugenics, whose "research" has been supported by the Pioneer Fund. A Nazi endowment specializing in production of justifications for eugenics since 1937, the Pioneer Fund is embedded in a network of right-wing foundations...Fascism therefore is best understood not as a spontaneous "populist" working-class or middle-class movement, but as a politically orchestrated and well-funded instrument of the capitalist ruling class...since the 1970s...the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and a host of other think tanks, research institutes, and lobbying organizations...[have had] numerous ties to Nazism, past and present...For 2 decades a network of militarist, racist, neo-Nazi, Christian fundamentalist, anti-Communist organizations has nurtured what [James William Gibson] accurately labels "the core of fascist culture" in the United States...The Pioneer Fund was setup in 1937 by textile magnate and Nazi supporter Wycliffe Draper...[it] has supplied money to every major "researcher"...who has proclaimed the genetic inferiority of African Americans and called for the adoption of eugenics as the basis for public policy...Roger Pearson, before he emigrated to the United States in the mid-1960s, headed the Northern League, a "white supremacist European organization that included former Nazi SS officials"...Pearson wrote four Nazi books...based on the writings of Hans Gunther, Hitler's foremost racial theoretician...Pearson moved to Washington in 1975...[he] became associated with the Heritage Foundation...[and] joined [the] editorial board [of Heritage's] Policy Review...Heritage...also published Charles Murray's monograph...[Murray] has been on the payroll of the AEI, the Manhattan Institute...and the...Bradley Foundation."
  10. ^ Stanley, Jason (December 22, 2021). "America is now in fascism's legal phase". The Guardian. Retrieved July 23, 2025.

External sources

Further reading

  • Ferguson, Roderick (Fall 2019). "'We Cannot Be the Same After the Siege'". Boston Review. 44 (4): 171-178. ISSN 0734-2306.
  • McCarthy, Jesse (December 16, 2019). "Finding the Other". The Nation. Retrieved July 23, 2025.
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