Jean toomer and the harlem renaissance
•
By Elizabeth Brevard, Intern, Catalog of American Portraits, National Portrait Gallery
An author, philosopher, and spiritual adviser, Washington, D.C., native Jean Toomer (–) challenged the accepted race and social labels during the mid-twentieth century. Toomer’s father left his wife and son in , forcing the single mother to move in with her father, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback, the former governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction and the first U.S. governor of African American descent.
Toomer was of European and African American ancestry, which sometimes allowed him to pass in society as a white man. For example, his registration for the draft identifies him as African American, but both of his certificates of marriage to white women list him as white (Byrd and Gates).
Most of his formative years were spent in all-white neighborhoods, although he attended the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington. The profound and varied racial influences within Toomer’s life
•
Jean Toomer
Jean Toomer was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. 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
Born Nathan Pinchback Toomer on December 26, in Washington, D.C., he was the son of Nathan Toomer, a planter, and Nina Pinchback, the daughter of P. B. S. Pinchback, governor of Louisiana during Reconstruction and the first U.S. governor of African-American descent. Like his parents, Toomer could easily pass for white, his heritage comprising several European and African bloodlines.
In Nathan Toomer abandoned his family, forcing Nina and her son to live with her somewhat tyrannical father in Washington. P. B. S. Pinchback agreed to support them only under the condition that the boy’s name be changed. Though his name wa
•
Jean Toomer
American poet and novelist
Jean Toomer | |
|---|---|
Toomer circa – | |
| Born | Nathan Pinchback Toomer ()December 26, Washington, D.C., United States |
| Died | March 30, () (aged&#;72) Doylestown, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Occupation | Poet, novelist |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
| Notable works | Cane () |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 1 |
Jean Toomer (born Nathan Pinchback Toomer; December 26, &#; March 30, ) was an American poet and novelist commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance, though he actively resisted the association, and with modernism. His reputation stems from his novel Cane (), which Toomer wrote during and after a stint as a school principal at a black school in rural Sparta, Georgia. The novel intertwines the stories of six women and includes an apparently autobiographical thread; sociologist Charles S. Johnson called it "the most astonishingly brilliant beginning of any Negro writer of his generation".[1] He resisted being cla