During slavery, religion was considered both an emancipating
             influence (blacks created their own churches, religious ceremonies) as well
             as yet another method by which whites tried to further subjugate blacks
             into the institution of slavery. According to Jean Toomer, though, the
             role of religion for blacks in the emancipated South was quite different,
             with many newly freed slaves viewing the mainstream religions in the latter
             role rather than its former. However, besides the positive rhythms of
             black life recorded by Toomer, he also observed and was touched by the
             tensions that surrounded life in the emancipated South: ". . . the
             bitterness, strain, and violence of the southern racial situation"
             (O'Daniel, 1988, 8). According to O'Daniel, in November 1921, before
             leaving the South, he sent a poem, "Georgia Dusk," to The Liberator, and
             while on the train north he began to write the sketches that appeared in
             the first section of Cane. Cane was an experimental novel by Toomer that
             celebrated black experience as symbolized by the title. "The southern
             experience had inspired him to a lyrical interpretation of the harshness,
             cruelty, strength, and beauty of black American reality. Cane was his song
             of celebration to the elements of the Afro-American experience" (O'Daniel,
             1988, 8). In one respect, Toomer was in a unique position to gauge the
             fundamental shifts in the social order that took place following the wake
             of the Civil War that served to influence how blacks and religion were
             viewed. "Toomer was able to move easily between black and white societies
             and was recognized in either as a member. This fact opened to him unusual
             perspectives, perspectives of a kind that few people can experience"
             (Kraft, 1988, 147). By sharp contrast though, in his book, Jean Toomer and
             the Prison-House of Thought: A Phenomenology of the Spirit, Jones (1993)
             says, "In Cane, Toomer wrote o...