Jean Toomer was born  Nathan Eugene Toomer  in 1894. His maternal grandfather was a Louisiana senator, his paternal grandmother was a slave, and his father was a mulatto who passed for white. His childhood years were spent on the affluent side of  Washington,D.C. Unfortunately, that did not last long. His family spiraled downward from upper-class to lower-class,  moving from the mansions and well manicured lawns of D.C.'s aristrocracy to the working-class neighborhoods of Brooklyn,N.Y., New Rochelle,N.Y. ,and back to  D.C. to a black ghetto. It was Toomer's first experience in black culture.
After leaving high school in 1912 Toomer wandered around trying to find himself.  The journey led him to become  a bodybuilder, welder, car salesman, student of agriculture, and hobo. In 1919 he collapsed  of  nervous  exhaustion.  After nursing himself back to health he came to New York's Greenwich Village in 1920. It was there he a then well known novelist named Waldo Frank.  The friendship led Toomer  to consider a career as a writer.
He returned to D.C. to care for an ailing grandfather  and hone his new found talent for writing.  In D.C.as he developed his writing skills, he  literally filled a trunk with his unpublished manuscripts.
In 1921 Toomer accepted a job as principal at an agricultural institute in Hancock County, Georgia. There he became enmeshed in culture of the southern Negro. He felt at one with them, or as some people speculated, he got in touch with his black side.  Returning to the north he began to write  tirelessly about his experiences in the Georgia's black communities.  He returned to the south again to be recharged, this time to South Carolina, and with his friend Waldo Frank.
In 1923 he published "Cane"  a book which glorified the Negro experience in Georgia. The book was popular among the black literati, but it only sold 500 copies.  What was significant about the book was that it idealized the culture of the southern Negro. Also the heralded the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance.
After the publication of "Cane" Toomer abandoned writing and became guru of mysticism and teacher of East Indian religion.
Though Toomer's  claim to fame was a book which  honored  the  culture of  southern blacks, he became furious when someone would call him a Negro.  As a matter of fact  he publicly denied his membership in the black race.
Jean Toomer died  in 1967 at the age of  seventy-two.