Jean Toomer was born Nathan Eugene Pinchback Tomer in Washington, D.C. on December 26, 1894. Of racially mixed descent, Jean Toomer considered himself a “member of the human race” rather than of any specific race. Deeply concerned with the legacy of slavery, and the race riots that were spreading through the country after World War I, Toomer traveled in the South. Working as a school principal in Sparta, Georgia, he studied and wrote Cane. In the 1920s, Toomer became acquainted with the ideas of the Russian mystic, Georges Gurdjieff, and focused on spirituality and the notion of world peace through the obliteration of racial difference. Toomer’s attempt to correct what he considered to be a destructive focus on race caused many critics to accuse him of denying his origins. Toomer died in 1967.

The Black Renaissance in Washington, DC, Jean Toomer

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/toomer/jean-toomer.html, The Jean Toomer Pages

The African American Literature Book Club, Jean Toomer

http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/toomer.html, Jean Toomer (1894 - 1967)

Poets.org, Poets of the Harlem Renaissance and After