Léopold Sédar Senghor

Academic career

Senghor 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, where he taught during the period 1935–45.

Senghor started his teaching years at the lycée René-Descartes in Tours; he also taught at the lycée Marcelin-Berthelot in Saint-Maur-des-Fosses near Paris. He also studied linguistics taught by Lilias Homburger at the École pratique des hautes études. He studied with prominent social scientists such as Marcel Cohen, Marcel Mauss and Paul Rivet, director of the Institut d'ethnologie de Paris.

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 a response to the racism still prevalent in France. It turned the racial slur nègre into a positively connoted celebration of African culture and character. The idea of négritude informed Senghor's cultural criticism and literary work, and became a guiding principle for his political thought in his career as a statesman.

Political changes

In 1947, Senghor left the African Division of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), which had given enormous financial support to the social movement. With Mamadou Dia, he founded the Bloc démocratique sénégalais (1948). They won the legislative elections of 1951, and Guèye lost his seat. Senghor was involved in the negotiations and drafting of the Fourth Republic's constitution.

Re-elected deputy in 1951 as an independent overseas member, Senghor was appointed 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 Thiès, Senegal in November 1956 and then advisory minister in the Michel Debré'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 of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe.

In 1964, Senghor published the first volume of a series of five, titled Liberté. The book contains a variety of speeches, essays and prefaces.

Senegal

Senghor supported federalism for newly independent African states, a type of "French Commonwealth", while retaining a degree of French involvement:

In Africa, when children have grown up, they leave their parents' hut, and build a hut of their own by its side. Believe me, we don't want to leave the French compound. We have grown up in it, and it is good to be alive in it. We simply want to build our own huts.

Since federalism was not favoured by the African countries, he decided to form, along with Modibo Keita, the Mali Federation with former French Sudan (present-day Mali). Senghor was president of the Federal Assembly until it failed 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. The first 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 under suspicion of fomenting a coup d'état. He was held in prison for 12 years. Following this, Senghor took actions to establish an authoritarian presidential regime where all rival political parties were suppressed.

By 1966, Senegal had become a one-party state. Senghor tightly circumscribed press freedom in Senegal where the media market was monopolized by state-run media such as Le Soleil and Radio Sénégal.

On 22 March 1967, Senghor survived an assassination attempt. The suspect, Moustapha Lô, pointed his pistol towards the President after he had participated in the sermon of Tabaski, but the gun did not fire. Lô was sentenced to death for treason and executed on 15 June 1967, even though it remained unclear if he had actually wanted to kill Senghor.

In 1976, Senghor permitted opposition parties to compete, although he limited the number of total parties to three (socialist, communist and liberal), of which Senghor's party would be the designated socialist party. The Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) was designated as the liberal party, and the African Independence Party was designated as the communist party. The political opposition said that they were constrained and not allowed to compete on equal footing with the regime. The 1978 Senegalese general election was the first multi-party election since 1963.

Following an announcement at the beginning of December 1980, Senghor resigned his position at the end of the year, before the end of his fifth term. He was the first African head of state to retire voluntarily. Abdou Diouf replaced him as the head of the country. One of Diouf's first actions was to remove restrictions on the number of political parties in Senegal. He created a performing education system. 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.

Francophonie

He supported the creation of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and was elected vice-president of the High Council of the Francophonie. In 1982, he was one of the founders of the Association France and developing countries whose objectives were to bring attention to the problems of developing countries, in the wake of the changes affecting the latter.