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Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor
Senegalese poet and statesman, founder of the Senegalese Democratic Bloc. Senghor was elected president of Senegal in the 1960s. He retired from office in 1980. He was one of the originators of the concept of Négritude, defined as the literary and artistic expression of the black African experience. In historical context the term has been seen as a reaction against French colonialism and a defence of African culture. It has deeply influnced the strengthening of African identity in the French-speaking black world.
"L'èmotion est nègre, la raision est héllène." (emotion is Negro, reason is Greek) "Negritude is the totality of the cultural values of the Black world."
Léopold Sédar Senghor was born in Joal-la-Portugaise, a small fishing vilage about seventy miles south of Dakar. His father was of noble descent and wealthy merchant. His mother was a Peul, one of a pastoral and nomadic people. Later Senghor wrote: "I grew up in the heartland of Africa, at the crossroads / Of castes and races and roads" The first seven years of his life Senghor spent in Djilor with his mother and maternal uncles and aunts. At the age of twelve, he attended the Catholic mission school of Ngazobil. He continued his studied at the Libermann Seminary and Lycée Van Vollenhoven, finishing secondary-school education in 1928.
After winning a state scholarship, Senghor then moved to Paris and graduated from the Lycée Louis-le-grand in 1931. During these years he read African-American poets of the Harlem Renaissance and such French poets as Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Verlaine and Valéry. Among Senghor's s friends were Aimé Cesaire, with whom he would develop
the idea of Negritude, and Georges Pompidou, who later elected President of France. In 1932 Senghor was granted French citizenship. He served in a regiment of colonial infantry and in 1935 he obtained the agrégation degree in grammar.
From 1935 he worked as a teacher, notably at Lycée Descartes in Tours, then...