Elephants die and leave their ivory. Tony Morrison left ghosts—not her own ghost, but the ghosts that appear when people forget America’s brutal past.

Toni Morrison wrote novels, 11 of them, but I was struck by Beloved. I remember I could not sleep after reading it. Morrison, a black woman, spoke of what was close to her skin and subconscious, the trauma of her ancestors, the welts of slavery: millions of Negroes who in