Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-2001) – his last name sounds like Song Gore – was a Senegalese poet, scholar and statesman. He was the first president of an independent Senegal, a French poet and one of the top black African thinkers of the 1900s, one of the founders of the negritude movement. He was also the first black African admitted to the French Academy, long the preserve of white men.
He was president of Senegal for 20 years, from 1960 to 1980. He was one of the few African leaders to leave office peacefully and one of the few who had a free press. People said he kissed up to the French too much. He said a country as poor as Senegal needs a friend.
Senghor was born in a small town along the Mamaguedy, 100 km south of Dakar, Senegal. He grew up Catholic in a land that was mostly Muslim. He went to a missionary school and loved to read French books. In time he became one of the top students in Senegal and won a scholarship to study in Paris.
So in 1928 he got on a ship to France and left Africa. Thus began what he called his 16 years of wandering.
In Paris he became friends with Aime Cesaire of Martinique and Leon Damas of French Guiana . Like Senghor, they found themselves caught between two words, one black, one white. The white world was tellling them it had all the answers, that their blackness was holding them back. Yet they found whites cold and stiff and full of themselves, living in “the world that has died of machines and cannons.”
So together they came up with negritude: the idea that black thought, feeling, art and ideas were just as good as those of Europe. It became a movement among black writers, an early form of black pride.
Senghor loved France and the French language and yet he also loved Africa too. He felt torn, something he wrote about in his poetry. He felt like he was two different people. Yet choosing to be just one would narrow him. So he chose neither and remained whole.
He got his degree from the University of Paris in 1935 and became a French and Latin teacher in France. Because he was black some of his students were surprised to see that he wore clothes!
Four years later war came. Senghor fought for France with the Tirailleurs Senegalais, France’s West African army. He spent two years in a Nazi German prison camp. There he wrote a book of French poetry.
After the war he represented Senegal in the French National Assembly. He pushed for greater freedom for Senegal, but not for outright independence. He also pushed for Senegal and French Sudan (now called Mali) to become one. He thought that so long as Africa remains divided into little countries it will remain weak and poor.
In 1962 his name was in the running for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lost to John Steinbeck.
See also:
Abagagond,
You’ve added to my knowledge again. I’ve been saving your posts on black people who are not as widely known about as the few that we always talk about. Normally, I would go to Amazon & search for more reading material, but I’m boycotting Amazon.
Thanks for this.
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Thanks for letting me know that. It is encouraging.
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Crap…the comment I left yesterday was meant for this post..sorry. I’m so use to scrolling down for the comment form. ONE DAY I’ll get this together!
Go.
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WHY IS THIS GREAT MAN NEVER EVEN TALK ABOUT HIS CHILDREN? CAN ANYONE TELL ME THE NAMES OF HIS FAMILY AND CHILDREN PLEASE? THANK YOU. MJL
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He had divorced his first wife in 1956 and remarried the following year with Colette Hubert, a French woman from Normandy, with whom he had a son, Philip Maguilen (1958-1981), died in an accident in Dakar. He devoted the book “Lettres d’Hivernage ” to his second wife and “Elégie pour Philip Maguilen Senghor,” written in 1983 for his death son.
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