SOURCE: “Jean Toomer's Sparta,” in American Literature, Vol. 67, No. 4, December, 1995, pp. 747-75.

In the following essay, Foley locates one of the actual settings for Cane as the town of Sparta, Georgia, and assesses the impact the place had on Toomer's work and life.

Students of Cane have long been aware that the “Sempter” of Toomer's text is Sparta, seat of Hancock County in central Georgia. Toomer himself freely acknowledged his text's close connection with the locale where he had lived for three months in the fall of 1921 while serving as substitute principal for the Sparta Agricultural and Industrial Institute. In 1922 Toomer wrote to Sherwood Anderson, “My seed was planted in the cane- and cotton-fields, and in the souls of black and white people in the small southern town. My seed was planted in myself down there.” In a 1923 letter to the Liberator, Toomer remarked, “A visit to Georgia...