The Best of Africa

Léopold Sédar Senghor (9 October 1906 – 20 December 2001) was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who served as the first president of Senegal (1960–1980). Senghor was the first African to sit as a member of the Académie française. He was also the founder of the political party called the Senegalese Democratic Bloc. He is regarded by many as one of the most important African intellectuals of the 20th Century.

Léopold Sédar Senghor was born on 9 October 1906 in the small coastal city of Joal, some one hundred kilometres south of Dakar. Basile Diogoye Senghor, Léopold’s father, was a businessman belonging to the bourgeois tribe Serer, a minority group in Senegal. Gnilane Ndiémé Bakhou, Léopold’s mother, and the third wife of his father, was Muslim of Peul origin belonging to the Tabor tribe. She gave birth to six children, including two sons. Senghor had also inherited from the Serers, apart his first name, his two last names: his father’s name, Senghor (derived from the Portuguese for Lord, Senhor [1][2][3]) and the Serere’s name Sedar (meaning “One that shall not be humiliated”).

At the age of eight Senghor began his studies in Senegal in the Ngasobil boarding school of the Fathers of the Holy Spirit. In 1922 he entered a seminary in Dakar. When he was told the religious life was not for him, he attended a secular institution. By then, he was already passionate about French literature. He distinguished himself in French, Latin, Greek and Algebra. With his Baccalaureate completed, he was awarded a scholarship to continue his studies in France.

In 1928 Senghor sailed from Senegal for France, beginning in his words, “sixteen years of wandering.” Starting his post-secondary studies at the Sorbonne, he quickly quit and went on to Louis-Le-Grand to finish his prep course for entrance at the École Normale Supérieure. He was there while Paul Guth, Henri Queffélec, Robert Verdier and Georges Pompidou were also studying at this establishment. After failing the entrance exam, he decided to prepare for his grammar Aggregation. He was granted his aggregation in 1935 after a failed first attempt.

He graduated from the University of Paris, where he received the Agrégation in French Grammar. Subsequently, he was designated professor at the Universities of Tours and Paris, during the period 1935-1945.


Senghor started his teaching years at the Lycee Rene-Descartes in Tours and taught with the Lycee Marcelin Berthelot in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses the environs of Paris. Besides his teaching career, Senghor attended Linguistics classes taught by Lilias Homburger at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes, and studied also with prominent social scientists such as Marcel Cohen, Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet (director of the Institut d’ethnologie de Paris). It was at this time that Senghor, along with other intellectuals of the African diaspora who had come to study in the colonial capital, coined the term, and conceived the notion of “négritude,” which was in effect a response to the racism still prevalent in France, turning the racial slur “nègre” into a positively connoted celebration of African culture and character. The idea of négritude would inform not only Senghor’s cultural criticism and literary work, but also became a guiding principle for his political thought in his career as a statesman.

In 1939, Senghor was enrolled as a French army officer within the 59th Colonial Infantry division. A year later he was made prisoner by the Germans in la Charite-sur-Loire. He was interned in different camps but finally interned in Front Stalag 230, in Poitiers. This later camp was reserved for colonial troops captured during the war. German soldiers wanted to execute him and the other black POWs the same day they were captured, but they escaped this fate by yelling “Vive la France, vive l’Afrique noire!” The soldiers decided against executing them after being told by a French officer that this entirely racist act would dishonour the Aryan race and the German Army. In total, Senghor spent two years in different prison camps, where he spent most of his time writing poems. In 1942 he was released for medical reasons. He resumed his teaching career while staying involved in the resistance with the Front national universitaire.

Once the war was over, he took over the position of Dean of the Linguistics Department with the École Nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, a position he would hold until Senegal’s independence in 1960. While travelling on a research trip for his poetry, the local socialist leader, Lamine Gueye, suggested he become a member of the Assemblée nationale française. Senghor accepted and became député for the riding of Senegal-Mauritanie, when colonies were granted the right to be represented by elected individuals. One occasion when Senghor showed his difference from Lamine Gueye, was when the train conductors on the line Dakar-Niger went on strike. The latter voted against the strike arguing the movement would paralyse the colony, while Senghor supported the workers, gaining him great support among Senegalese.

In 1946, Senghor married the AEF governor’s daughter with whom he had two sons: Francis (1947-) and Guy (1948-1983).

The following year he left the African Division of the French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) that had given enormous financial support to the social movement. With Mamadou Dia, Senghor founded the Bloc démocratique sénégalais (1948). They won the legislative elections of 1951, and Lamine Gueye lost his seat.

Re-elected depute in 1951 as an independent overseas member, he was state secretary to the Council’s president in Edgar Faure’s government from 1 March 1955 to 1 February 1956. He became mayor of the city of Thies, Senegal in November 1956 and then advisory minister in the Michel Debre’s government from 23 July 1959 to 19 May 1961. He was also a member of the commission responsible for drafting the Fifth Republic’s constitution, general councillor for Senegal, member of the Grand Conseil de l’Afrique Occidentale Francaise and member for the parliamentary assembly of the European Council.

Meanwhile, he divorced his first wife and in 1957 married Colette Hubert, a French national from Normandy with whom he had a son, Philippe Maguilien (-1981). In 1964 he published the first volume of a series of five titled Liberté. The book contains a variety of speeches, allocutions, essays and prefaces.

Senghor was a supporter of federalism for newly independent African states, a type of “French Commonwealth”. Federalism not being favoured by the African countries, he decided to form, along with Modibo Keita, the Mali Federation with former French Sudan (modern Mali). Senghor was president of the Federal Assembly until its failure in 1960. Afterwards, Senghor became the first President of the Republic of Senegal, elected on 5 September 1960. He is the author of the Senegalese national anthem, le Lion rouge (the red lion). The prime minister, Mamadou Dia was in charge of executing Senegal’s long-term development plan, while Senghor was in charge of foreign relations. The two men quickly disagreed. In December 1962, Mamadou Dia was arrested and suspected of fomenting a coup. He remained in jail for twelve years. Following this, Senghor created a presidential regime. On 22 March 1967, Senghor escaped an attempt on his life. The suspect was sentenced to death.

He resigned his position before the end of his fifth term in December 1980. Abdou Diouf replaced him at the head of the country. Under his presidency, Senegal started a multy-party regime (limited to three: socialist, communist and liberal) as well as a performing education system. Senghor is often falsely seen as a democrat; however, he imposed a one-party regime and violently crushed several student protest movements. Despite the end of official colonialism, the value of Senegalese currency continued to be fixed by France, the language of learning remained French, and Senghor ruled the country with French political advisors.

He was elected a member of l’Académie française on 2 June 1983, at the 16th seat where he succeeded the Duke of Levis-Mirepoix. He was the first African to sit at the Academie. The entrance ceremony in his honor took place on March 29th, 1984, in presence of then French President François Mitterrand. This was considered as a further step towards greater openness in the Académie, after the previous election of a woman, Marguerite Yourcenar.

In 1993, the last and fifth book of the Liberté series was published: Liberté 5: le dialogue des cultures.

“Je ne suis pas sûr de mourir. Et si c’était ça l’enfer?” (“I’m not sure that I will die. Maybe this is hell?”) said Senghor, post-retirement, in 1996.

Although a socialist, Senghor avoided the Marxist and anti-Western ideology that had become popular in post-colonial Africa, favouring the maintenance of close ties with France and the western world. This is seen by many as a contributing factor to Senegal’s political stability: it remains one of the few African nations never to have had a coup, and to have always had a peaceful transfer of power.

Senghor’s tenure as president was characterized by the development of African socialism, which was created as an indigenous alternative to Marxism, drawing heavily from the négritude philosophy. In developing this, he was assisted by Ousmane Tanor Dieng. On 31 December 1980, he retired in favour of his prime minister, Abdou Diouf.

Seat number 16 of the Académie was vacant after the Senegalese poet’s death. He was ultimately replaced by another former president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.


Senghor received several honours in the course of his life. He was made Grand-Croix of the Légion d’honneur, Grand-Croix of the l’Ordre national du Mérite, commander of arts and letters. He also received academic palms and the Grand-Croix of the l’Ordre du lion du Sénégal. His war exploits earned him the medal of Reconnaissance franco-alliée 1939-1945 and the combattant cross 1939-1945. He was named honorary doctor of thirty-seven universities.

The French Language International University in Alexandria was officially open in 1990 and was named after him.

The airport of Dakar, Dakar-Yoff-Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport, is named after him, and the Passerelle Solférino in Paris was renamed after him in 2006, on the centenary of his birth.

His poetry was widely acclaimed, and in 1978 he was awarded the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca. His poem A l’appel de la race de Saba published in 1936 was inspired by the entry of Italian troops in Abbis Abeba. In 1948, Senghor compiled and edited a volume of Francophone poetry called Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache for which Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an introduction, titled “Orphée Noir” (Black Orpheus).

For his epitaph was a poem he had written, namely:

Quand je serai mort, mes amis, couchez-moi sous Joal-l’Ombreuse.
Sur la colline au bord du Mamanguedy, près l’oreille du sanctuaire des Serpents.
Mais entre le Lion couchez-moi et l’aïeule Tening-Ndyae.
Quand je serai mort mes amis, couchez-moi sous Joal-la-Portugaise.
Des pierres du Fort vous ferez ma tombe, et les canons garderont le silence.
Deux lauriers roses-blanc et rose-embaumeront la Signare.

When I’m dead, my friends, place me below Shadowy Joal,
On the hill, by the bank of the Mamanguedy, near the ear of Serpents’ Sanctuary.
But place me between the Lion and ancestral Tening-Ndyae.
When I’m dead, my friends, place me beneath Portuguese Joal.
Of stones from the Fort build my tomb, and canons will keep quiet.
Two laurier roses — white and pink — will perfume the Signare.