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| LÉOPOLD
SEDAR SENGHOR |
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Both a poet and
a statesman, Léopold Sédar Senghor
was born in October 1906 at Joal,
about a hundred kilometres south of Dakar;
his family were "Sérère"
and held property; they were Catholics.
In 1914 he began studying at N'Gazobil boarding
school run by "les Pères du
Saint Esprit" (the Holy Spirit Fathers
).
In 1923 he is a pupil at College Liberman
(secondary school) in Dakar,
passes his "baccalauréat"
in 1928, is granted a half scholarship from
the French government. Within the same year
he boards a ship to France and attends Lycée
Louis le Grand in Paris.
In 1931, still at lycée Louis le Grand,
he enters "Khagne" (ie: literature
class preparing entrance to the Ecole Normale
Supérieure, the best school for the
training of literature teachers in France
) .
There, he will meet Georges Pompidou (who
was the French president from 1969 to his
death in 1974), Paul Guth, Robert Verdier,
Henri Queffelec . |
In 1933, Léopold
Sédar Senghor was to be the first African
"Agrégé" (ie
: he passed the "Agrégation",
the highest competitive examination for teachers
in France). Within the same year he solicits
and obtains the French nationality which would
have been his "ex officio"
had he been born in Dakar,
Goree,
Saint-Louis
or Rufisque. In 1934 he founds the journal
"L'Etudiant Noir" ("The
Black Student") along with Aimé
Cesaire (writer from Martinique) and Léon
Damas.
In this journal he will publish the first
of his reflections on Negritude : |
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"There is no denying
that negritude is a fact, a culture ; it
is the whole of economic and political,
intellectual and moral, artistic and social
values of not only the peoples of Africa
but also of the black minorities of America,
and indeed of Asia and Oceania."
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In 1937 he is appointed teacher
of literature and grammar at Lycée
Descartes in Tours
(in the Loire valley ), then at Lycée
Marcelin Berthelot in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés
(suburb east of Paris ).
In 1939 he is mobilized with the 23rd then
3rd Colonial Infantry Regiment .
On June 20th he is made prisoner by the German
army at La Charité sur Loire (less
than 200 kms south of Paris).
In 1941 he joins the "Résistance"
with the University National Front. Discharged
in 1942, he resumes his post at Lycée
M. Berthelot and in 1944 he is appointed part-time
lecturer at the National School of Overseas
French Territories.
After the second world war he joins the S.F.I.O.
(socialist party) and becomes deputy for Senegal.
In 1955 he is Secretary of State in Edgar
Faure's cabinet.
In January 1960 Senegal and the Sudan Republic
form the Federation of Mali. Senegal obtains
Independence in the course of the same year
and in August, Léopold Sédar
Senghor is voted in as the President of the
Republic of Senegal and will hold office until
December 31st, 1980 when he resigns of his
own will in favour of Abdou
Diouf, whom he had chosen as his successor
and prepared to hold office. |
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Listen
to L.S. Senghor's voice (340 K)
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