Massachusetts College of Agriculture. During his period of transition between the two colleges, Toomer found an interest in physical fitness. Before officially enrolling at Massachusetts, he changed his mind, opting instead to begin taking classes at the American College of Physical Training in Chicago. Five months later, in January of 1916, he moved to Chicago to begin his studies. By the fall of 1916 he alsobegan supplementing his education with studies at the University of Chicago."I have lived by turn in Washington, New York, Chicago, and Sparta (Georgia)... I have worked, it seems to me, at everything: selling papers, delivery boy, soda clerk, salesman, shipyard worker, librarian-assistant, physical director, school teacher, grocery clerk, and God knows what all. Neither the universities of Wisconsin or New York gave me what I wanted, so I quit them."It was in Chicago that Toomer began to broaden his interest in literature. Although evidence shows that, in addition to Dante's Inferno , Toomer was affected by Herman Melville's Moby Dick to such a degree that he actually compared himself to Ishmael by having "mentally turned failure to triumph." One of the most prominent literary characters with whom he became enthralled was Victor Hugo's character Jean Valjean; ToomerHis southern sojourn as a school principal in Sparta, Georgia (1922) found in him the belief that he had located his ancestral roots (from Toomer's experience and influence, Sparta was popularized as an ancestral root source by many of the Harlem Renaissance intelligensia; e.g., Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes both traveled there in the summer of 1927). Thus, he began to write poems, stories, and sketches, especially about southern women whose stretch towards self-realization forced them into conflict with American societal moral attitudes. Upon return to Washington, he repeated his efforts, this time focusing on inhibited Negroes in the North. He made friends wit...
