As a child in Washington, Pinchback attended segregated black schools. (He did not take the name Jean Toomer until starting his literary career.) When his mother remarried and they moved to suburban New Rochelle, New York, the youth attended an all-white school. After his mother's death in 1909, when he was 15, Pinchback returned to Washington to live with his maternal Pinchback grandparents. He graduated from the M Street High School, a prestigious academic black high school in the city with a national reputation.