Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer
Toomer circa 1920-1930
Born	(1894-12-26)December 26, 1894 Washington, D.C., United States
Died	March 30, 1967(1967-03-30) (aged 72) Doylestown, Pennsylvania, United States
Occupation	Poet

Jean Toomer (December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an African American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and modernism. His first book Cane, published in 1923, is considered by many to be his most significant.

He continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. After his second marriage in 1934, he moved from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) and retired from public life. His papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University.

Nathan Pinchback Toomer was born in Washington, D.C. in 1894. His father Nathan Toomer (1839-1906) was a mixed-race freedman, born into slavery in 1839 in Chatham County, Georgia. He, his mother Kit and siblings were sold to John Toomer in Houston County; after his death, they were bought in 1859 from the estate by John's brother Col. Henry Toomer. Among his siblings was a sister Fannie, who later married a Mr. Colomon. Nathan worked for Henry Toomer as a personal valet and assistant before and after the Civil War, learning the ways of the white upper class and later taking his surname. By 1869 Nathan Toomer had married a mulatto woman named Harriet, and they had four daughters, including Martha, who married Seymour Glover, and Theodosia, who married a Mr. Braswell. By 1870, Nathan Toomer was a farmer and the wealthiest freedman in Hancock County, with $20,000 in real estate and $10,000 in personal property. Harriet Toomer died on August 17, 1891.

Nathan Toomer in 1892 married Amanda America Dickson (1849-1893). A mixed-race woman and daughter of a slave, she was raised by her white planter father, David Dickson, and grandmother Elizabeth Dickson. After his death in 1885, she inherited a 15,000-acre plantation and total estate worth $400,000 from him and was described as the "wealthiest colored woman in America." An agricultural reformer, Dickson and his mother had educated Amanda. In 1866 she married a white paternal first cousin and had two sons by him. Unhappy in the marriage, in 1870 Amanda returned to her father's house. Later she completed college at Atlanta University. She died in 1893 after about a year of marriage to Toomer. He and her sons struggled over her estate, but ultimately, he received almost nothing. Her father's will had left the estate to her sons, and she died intestate.