Leopold Sedar Senghor

Leopold Sedar Senghor was a president and a poet. His great work influenced the world of poetry. I think he was the first African president to be a poet and a great man of literature. He particularly was one of the conceptors of 'Negritude' which he developed as a philosophy to give back to black people their dignity and sense of belonging to a brilliant civilization . He wrote many books on this topic particularly compilations of poems dedicated to the African women of Joal, a small city on the coast of Senegal where President Senghor was born. His work has made a major contribution in the creation of African literature. Today Leopold Sedar Senghor is remembered as the first black man to enter the French Academy where he remained until the time of his death.

Here is one of his poems:

Leopold Sedar Senghor was born on October 6th, 1906 in Joal, a small town on the Senegalese Atlantic coast. He started his studies in a Catholic mission in Ngazobil, a small village near Joal. He then went to the College Louis Le Grand and then on to the University of Sorbone in Paris where he really excelled and took a grammar aggregation degree successfully. He then became the first African to have such a degree in the whole continent. From 1935-1938 he taught linguistic and grammar at the Decartes High School in Tours, France. He then took a course on negro-African linguistics at the ethnology institute in Paris before being nominated teacher at the Marcellin Bertholot Lycee in St. Maures des Fossees in France in 1938. He got enlisted into the French army in 1939 and later got demobilized after being wounded. He then took an active part in the resistance with the National University front.

From 1944 until the independence of Senegal in 1960, he taught linguistics and negro-African civilization at the Ecole Nationale De la France D'outre Mer.

Here is a brief list of the many prizes and distinctions that Senghor garnered:

1963:Gold medal for the French Language

1965:Gold medal for poetic merit of the international prize

1966:Rouge et Vert international literary prize

1968:German prize for peace

1969:literary prize for the international academy of arts and letters

1970: International poetry prize of Knokke-Le-Zoute

1974: Guillaume Apollinaire Prize

1977: Prince in poetry

1978: Cino Del Duca Prize

1979: Unesco international Book prize

1980: President Sadate Prize for his activities in Africa

1981: AASAN World prize,Alfred de Vigny prize,CISAC gold medal

1985: Athenai prize in Greece

1986: International prize of the Golden Lion,Louise Michel Prize,Mont St Michel prize

1987: Intercultura prize in Rome

Honoris Causa doctorate in 37 universities around the world. On June 1983 he was nominated member of the French Academy, thus becoming the first African to reach that rank.

He died on December 20th, 2001.