It is somewhat ironic that Jean Toomer is remembered as the writer of one of the greatest novels ever written by a black author, because during his lifetime he only published one significant book and he spent very little time among blacks. His mother's family was rich and powerful inLouisiana, where her father, Pickney B. S. Pinch-back, had been the only African American ever to have served as acting governor. Toomer's father, Nathan Toomer Sr., was the son of a slave. His father left soon before Nathan Eugene Toomer was born on December 26, 1894, inWashington, D.C. The author was called Eugene Pinchback during his childhood, and was raised in affluent areas ofNew Orleans andWashington, where he hardly felt the effects of society's racist institutions until he was in high school.

In 1914, he enrolled in theUniversity of Wisconsin to major in agriculture, but quit after he found...