Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer 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 (1923), 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". He resisted being classified as a Negro writer, as he identified as "American". For more than a decade Toomer was an influential follower and representative of the pioneering spiritual teacher G.I. Gurdjieff. Later in life he took up Quakerism.

26 December 1894

Born on the same birth day (26 December): Alamgir Kabir (film maker) • Aleksej Pokuševski • Alex Schwazer • Denis Cheryshev • Elisabeth of the Palatinate • Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald • José Yves Limantour • Kenneth Darby • Mark Starr • Olga Lopes-Seale • Omar Infante • Ozzie Smith • Phan Bội Châu • Richard Widmark • Wang Lijun • Yu Takahashi (singer-songwriter)

Born in the same month (December 1894): Afrânio do Amaral • Alexander Nelke • Allie Vibert Douglas • Arthur Fiedler • Arthur Gilligan • C. R. Swart • December 29 • Deiva Zivarattinam • E. C. Segar • Edwin Linkomies • Ford Frick • Freddie Adkins • Georges Guynemer • Jack Thayer • James Thurber • Josef Imbach (athlete) • Patrick Flynn (athlete) • Robert Menzies • Warren William • Willem Schermerhorn