Jean Toomer (1896–1967), writer, poet, and playwright, was born in Washington, DC, the son of a Georgian farmer. Though he passed for white during certain periods of his life, he was raised in a predominantly African-American community and attended African-American high schools. Of his college education, which ended in 1917, Toomer said, "Neither the universities of Wisconsin or New York gave me what I wanted, so I quit them." He turned to writing poetry and prose, which he published in such periodicals as Broom, The Liberator, and The Little Review. A stint in Georgia as a teacher inspired Cane (1923), a book of prose poetry in which an African American struggles to discover his selfhood in various African-American communities. Toomer was praised for uniting "folk culture and the elite culture of the white avant-garde." With the publication of Cane, Toomer was considered a promising black writer.

After Cane, Toomer continued writing prodigiously, but most of his work was rejected by publishers. He turned to the spiritual teachings of Gurdjieff and taught his principles first in Harlem, then in Chicago. Toomer became a Quaker and lived the last ten years of his life as a recluse. His writing centers around his longing for racial unity, as illustrated by his long poem "Blue Meridian." In 1931 he published Essentials, a book of aphorisms and apothegms. Many of Toomer's short stories and poems are included in anthologies.