LEOPOLD SEDAR SENGHOR

Léopold Sédar Senghor was born in Joal, Afrique Occidentale Française (French West Africa now Republic of Senegal), to a Serer (an ethnic group in Senegal) Father and Roman Catholic mother. He initially wanted to become a priest and attended a seminary, but at the age of 20 he decided that he would rather teach and relocated to a college in Dakar.

In 1928 Senghor traveled to Paris to continue his studies on a partial scholarship. Léopold Senghor became the first black African to become an agrégé, the top qualification for a teacher in the French education system, and became a professor of African languages and civilization at the École Nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer.

While living in Paris, Senghor also became one of the trois pères or three fathers of the Negritude movement, an extension of the pan-African movement.

Senghor was drafted into the French army in 1939 and captured by the Germans in 1940. He spent two years in a concentration camp. After his release he joined the Resistance movement in France.

After World War II Senghor pursued a career in politics, entering the French National Assembly as one of Senegal's two deputies in 1946. In 1948 he founded the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise (UPS, Senegalese Progressive Union). When Senegal achieved independence in 1960, Senghor was elected its first president. He retired from the presidency on 31 December 1960.

Senghor attempted to modernize Senegal, worked against corruption and engaged the international community. He introduced a One-Party State in 1966, but restored multi-party democracy in 1978.

Senghor retired to France, became the first black African member of the French Academy in 1984, and published his memoir, Ce que je crois: négritude, francité, et civilisation de l'universel ('That Which I Believe: Negritude, Frenchness, and Universal Civilization') in 1988. He died at Verson, France, on 20 December 2001.

Publications of Senghor

• Prière aux masques (c. 1935 - published in collected works during the 1940s).
• Chants d'ombre (1945)
• Hosties noires (1948)
• Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache (1948)
• La Belle Histoire de Leuk-le-Lièvre (1953)
• Éthiopiques (1956)
• Nocturnes (1961). (English tr. By Clive wake and John O Reed  ,Nocturnes, London: Heinemann Educational
• Nation et voie africaine du socialisme (1961)
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin et la politique africaine (1962)
• Poèmes (1964).
• Lettres de d'hivernage (1973)
• Élégies majeures (1979)
• La Poésie de l'action: conversation avec Mohamed Aziza (1980)
• Ce que je crois (1988)