Léopold Sédar Senghor

Léopold Sédar Senghor (9 October 1906 – 20 December 2001) was a Senegalese poet and statesman, the first president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980, and a co-founder of the intellectual and literary idea of négritude. ^{1 2}

Senghor was not a Muslim: he was a Roman Catholic, raised in his parents' Catholic faith and sent to a seminary intending the priesthood as a boy; Wikidata records his religion as Catholicism. ^{2 3}

He is included in this museum as an "honoured cultural contemporary", as the founder's list names him: the founding president of a Muslim-majority country and one of the major theorists of African culture in the twentieth century, whose history belongs to the world his Muslim contemporaries lived in. ²

Senghor was born in the coastal town of Joal, some 110 kilometres south of Dakar, to a wealthy Serer peanut merchant and landowner and a mother of Fula origin; his father owned thousands of cattle and vast lands. ¹

The English article records a discrepancy in his birth date: his birth certificate gives 9 October 1906, while his baptismal certificate gives 9 August 1906; the birth-certificate date is followed. ¹

At seven he was sent to a Catholic mission school; at thirteen he decided to enter the Catholic priesthood and attended the Libermann seminary in Dakar, then left the seminary in 1926 for a secular lycée after being told the religious life was not for him. ^{3 1}

He won distinctions in French, Latin, Greek and algebra, earned a scholarship to continue his studies in France, and sailed there in 1928, beginning what he called his "sixteen years of wandering". ^{1 4}

In Paris Senghor studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Sorbonne, and in 1935 obtained the agrégation in French grammar — the first African to do so — then taught French at Tours and Paris until 1945. ¹

With other intellectuals of the African diaspora in Paris, notably Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas, he coined the term négritude, turning a racial slur into a celebration of African culture and character in response to the racism still prevalent in France. ¹

Enlisted in 1939 in a colonial infantry regiment, he was captured by the Germans in 1940 and spent two years in prisoner-of-war camps, writing poems and learning enough German to read Goethe, before his release on medical grounds in 1942; he then remained involved in the Resistance. ¹

After the war Senghor was made Dean of Linguistics at the École nationale de la France d'Outre-Mer and was elected a deputy for Sénégal-Mauritanie in the French National Assembly. ¹

In the 1946 constitutional negotiations he pushed for French citizenship to be extended to all the territories, and argued for a federal model in which each African territory would keep its "negro-African personality" alongside French experience and resources. ¹

In 1948 he and Mamadou Dia founded the Senegalese Democratic Bloc, which won the 1951 elections; he later served as a secretary of state in 1955, mayor of Thiès in 1956, and advisory minister in 1959. ¹

With Modibo Keïta he formed the Mali Federation of Senegal and the French Sudan; when it broke up in 1960, Senghor became the first president of the Republic of Senegal, elected on 5 September 1960, and he is the author of its national anthem. ⁴

His prime minister, Mamadou Dia, ran the long-term development plan while Senghor handled foreign relations; the two fell out, and in December 1962 Dia was arrested on suspicion of fomenting a coup and imprisoned for twelve years, after which Senghor built an authoritarian presidential regime in which rival parties were suppressed, and by 1966 Senegal was a one-party state. ¹

On 22 March 1967 Senghor survived an assassination attempt when the attacker's pistol failed to fire; the attacker was sentenced to death and executed. ⁴

In 1976 he permitted opposition parties again, but limited them to three designated parties — socialist, communist and liberal — on an unequal playing field favouring his own. ¹

On 31 December 1980 he resigned before the end of his fifth term, the first African head of state to retire voluntarily, and was succeeded by Abdou Diouf. ^{1 4}

Senghor supported the creation of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and was elected vice-president of its High Council. ⁴

On 2 June 1983 he was elected a member of the Académie française, the first African to sit in it, and his reception ceremony took place in March 1984 in the presence of President François Mitterrand. ¹

His poetry appeared in collections including Chants d'ombre (1945), Hosties noires (1948), Éthiopiques (1956), Nocturnes (1961) and Élégies majeures (1979). ⁴

In 1948 he compiled and edited the Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, for which Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the famous introduction "Orphée Noir" (Black Orpheus). ¹

His speeches and essays were gathered in the five volumes of Liberté, the last of them, Liberté 5: le dialogue des cultures, appearing in 1993. ¹

He married twice and had three sons, and spent his last years with his second wife, Colette Hubert, at Verson in Normandy. ¹

Senghor died at Verson on 20 December 2001, and his funeral was held at Dakar on 29 December; the absence of President Jacques Chirac and his prime minister from the funeral drew waves of criticism in France and Senegal as a failure of acknowledgement. ^{1 4}

Wikidata records his burial at Bel-Air Cemetery in Dakar. ²

This section sets out positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum.

Supporters. His supporters see a founding father who kept his country stable, built "African socialism" as an indigenous alternative to Marxism, and set a rare democratic precedent by surrendering power voluntarily. ¹

Critics. His critics answer that he ran a one-party state, circumscribed the press and suppressed opposition and student protests, and that Senegal remained bound to France in currency, language and political advisers long after formal colonialism ended. ^{4 1}

Senghor is regarded by many as one of the most important African intellectuals of the twentieth century, and his poetry and the négritude he formulated remain reference points in African literature, thought and postcolonial studies. ¹

Dakar's international airport was renamed for him in 1996, on his ninetieth birthday, the Passerelle Solférino in Paris was renamed for him in 2006, on the centenary of his birth, and the French-language Senghor University in Alexandria, opened in 1990, bears his name. ¹

• The defined source entities cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Revisions of this article must be dated, and must name the source that changed each fact.