Léopold Sédar Senghor is renowned as much for his cultural work and navigation of social divides as his politics.
Gifts of learning took him from a Sérère/Fulbe, Muslim/Christian family in a seaside town in western Senegal to Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris in 1928. There he prepared to sit the exams to enter the grandes écoles.
In Paris he met students from the French-speaking Caribbean – the Martinicans Aimé Césaire, Paulette and Jeanne Nardal, Léon Damas from French Guyana. Together they learned about the Harlem Renaissance and published their writing in new journals, giving shape to the cultural movement known as Négritude.
In 1935 Senghor became the first African to earn the title agrégé, the most highly qualified teacher in the French education system. He also took French citizenship and taught Latin, Greek and French in Tours. With the outbreak of World War II, Senghor joined the French army; after Germany’s invasion of France he served two years in various prisoner-of-war camps.
After liberation in 1945, on a literary research trip to Senegal, he was elected to represent Senegal/Mauritania in the French constituent assembly. That same year he published his first solo collection of poems, Chants d’ombre.
Senghor served as a minister in the governments of Edgar Faure and Michel Debré and helped draft France’s Fourth Republican constitution, which came into effect in 1946. He then entered the National Assembly alongside other French African leaders such as Félix Houphouët-Boigny (representing Côte d’Ivoire/Upper Volta).
Senghor also served on the assembly that brought the constitution of France’s current Fifth Republic into being.
Initially, as France’s African colonies began to push for more autonomy, he championed a French West African Federation. He stood on this platform to lead Senegal into a short-lived federation with French Sudan (Mali), followed by independence for Senegal in August 1960.
Senghor was the architect of modern Senegal, composing the national anthem; staging the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar in 1966 – long before FESPACO or PANAFEST; redrafting the constitution in 1963 to strengthen the presidency after a coup attempt.
In 1980, after 20 years as president, Senghor became the first modern black African leader to leave office voluntarily, stepping down before the end of his fifth term.
He spent his retirement in France, writing, promoting culture and supporting la Francophonie. Criticised by some as a colonialist at heart, Senghor remains a towering figure in the history of postwar Africa.
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