Senghor was a poet, a writer, a Senegalese politician, and the first President of the Republic of Senegal (1960–1980). He was also the first African man elected to the Académie Française.

Negritude has been defined by Léopold Sédar Senghor as “the sum of the cultural values of the black world as they are expressed in the life, the institutions, and the works of black men.” Sylvia Washington Bâ analyzes Senghor's poetry to show how the concept of negritude infuses it at every level.

Origins and development of the movement In the face of growing fascism, black students, scholars and artists from French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean got together with the aim of promoting an appreciation of the history and culture of black people.

These views inspired many of the basic ideas behind Negritude: that the mystic warmth of African life, gaining strength from its closeness to nature and its constant contact with ancestors, should be continually placed in proper perspective against the soullessness and materialism of Western culture; that Africans must ...