Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor, born October 9, 1906, in Joal, French Senegal, and died December 20, 2001, in Verson, France, was a Senegalese poet, philosopher, and politician who served as the first President of Senegal from 1960 to 1980. He is the principal theorist of Négritude, the literary and political movement that affirmed Black African cultural identity.

Born into a Serer Catholic family, Senghor was educated at Catholic mission schools in Senegal and went to Paris in 1928 on a scholarship. There he befriended Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas, and the three founded the journal L'Étudiant noir in 1935, in which the term négritude first appeared. He became the first African to pass the agrégation in grammar and taught in French lycées before serving in the French army in 1940 and being held as a prisoner of war.

After the war, Senghor entered politics, representing Senegal in the French National Assembly. When Senegal became independent in 1960 he was elected its first president, a position he held through four terms. His government promoted African socialism, francophone cultural exchange, and the Festival mondial des arts nègres of 1966 in Dakar.

In December 1980 he stepped down voluntarily, an unusual peaceful transfer of power in postcolonial Africa, and devoted himself to writing. In 1983 he became the first African elected to the Académie française. His poetry collections include Chants d'ombre (1945) and Hosties noires (1948).

The name Léopold is a French masculine given name from the Germanic Leudbald, combining leud, "people," and bald, "bold," meaning "bold among the people." Sédar is a Serer name meaning roughly "one who cannot be humiliated." He carried both as male given names.