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Jean Toomer (December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an 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.〔(Poetry Foundation profile )〕 Of mixed race and majority European ancestry, Toomer struggled to identify as "an American" and resisted efforts to classify him as a black writer. 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. ==Early life and education== Toomer was born Nathan Pinchback Toomer 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.〔"Nathan Toomer", Hancock County, GA; US Census〕 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.〔〔(Kent Anderson Leslie, "Amanda America Dickson, (1849-1893)" ), History and Archaeology, ''New Georgia Encyclopedia'', 2003/2013〕 In 1893 Toomer married Nina Pinchback (1866-1909), a wealthy young woman of mixed race. She was born in New Orleans as the third child of people of color free before the Civil War. Her father P. B. S. Pinchback was of majority European heritage, from several nationalities, and also of African and Cherokee descent. He served as an officer in the Union Army; he became a Republican politician in Louisiana during the Reconstruction era and was the first African American to serve as governor of a U.S. state when he succeeded Henry C. Warmoth. He was elected to the US Congress and Senate in 1872 and 1873, respectively, but lost challenges by Democrats in Congress. Her mother Nina (Hawthorne) Pinchback was a free woman of color from Tennessee. Both Pinchback and Hawthorne had white fathers and mothers of mixed race. In 1891-1892, with white Democrats establishing Jim Crow laws in Louisiana, the Pinchbacks had moved to Washington, DC, where they were easily part of the mulatto elite.〔(Kent Anderson Leslie and Willard B. Gatewood Jr. "'This Father of Mine ... a Sort of Mystery': Jean Toomer's Georgia Heritage" ), ''Georgia Historical Quarterly'' 77 (winter 1993)〕〔 They built a new house off Fourteenth Street, in what developed as a predominantly white, upper-class area of the city. Pinchback was suspicious of the older Toomer and strongly opposed his daughter's choice for marriage, but ultimately acquiesced.〔 After frequent travels, the senior Nathan Toomer abandoned his wife and son Nathan after the boy was born and returned to Georgia. Nina divorced him and took back her name of Pinchback; she and her son returned to live with her parents. At that time, angered by her husband's abandonment, her father insisted they use another name for her son and started calling him Eugene, after the boy's godfather.〔(Cynthia Earl Kerman, ''The Lives of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness'' ), LSU Press, 1989, p. 29〕 The boy also was given a variety of nicknames by various family members. As a child in Washington, Jean Toomer attended segregated black schools. When his mother remarried and they moved to suburban New Rochelle, New York, he attended an all-white school. After his mother's death in 1909, Toomer returned to Washington to live with his Pinchback grandparents. He graduated from the M Street School, a prestigious academic black high school.〔 Between 1914 and 1917, Toomer attended six institutions of higher education (the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, the American College of Physical Training in Chicago, the University of Chicago, New York University, and the City College of New York) studying agriculture, fitness, biology, sociology, and history, but he never completed a degree. His wide readings among prominent contemporary poets and writers, and the lectures he attended during his college years, shaped the direction of his writing.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Jean Toomer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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