Unsung Heroes: Lamine Senghor, Rene Maran and Negritude

While the conclusion of the Second World War marked the end of an era for many cultures and societies in the Western World, in regions affected by colonization the opposite was true. In the decades following the most catastrophic conflict in human history, movements of self-determination would spark across what would come to be known as the "Third World," with independence struggles from southeast Asia to the Indian subcontinent taking place. On the African continent, where all but two of the nations had been colonized by various European powers, this was no different. A variety of movements would spring up in locations across Africa, with different struggles being characterized by their contexts- anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, violent revolutionary conflicts in Kenya and Algeria, and somewhat more peaceful pan-Africanist demonstrations advocated by leaders such as future Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah. However, all of these movements can be argued to draw their principles and convictions from an ideological and political coalescence that has its origins decades prior to the rise of self-determination struggles on the African continent. At the core of this ideological movement was a set of principles and ideals that can even be argued to be philosophical in nature, as many of the people involved were intellectuals who raised existential questions regarding the role and place of black people both in their own societies and the emerging global one. This combination of philosophical principles and political activism would come together with a burgeoning black literary consciousness to form the concept that would come to be known as negritude. Traditionally characterized by prominent intellectuals and thinkers such as psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon and aestheticist Aime Cesaire, the negritude movement can also be traced to its origins in black activists operating in the Francophone African world and the metropole in the aftermath of World War I. Known now as the "Interwar Period" (1919-1939), this blip within the historical canon of negritude is often overlooked and ignored completely at worst and mentioned in passing at best, with many scholars attributing the true start of the negritude movement to the early 1930's. However, in reality the black intellectuals and aestheticists that would operate during the early 1920's would lay the foundation for the arrival of the celebrated Cesaires and Fanons of the modern historical canon. These people, such as Senegalese political activist Lamine Senghor and the award-winning Afro-French author Rene Maran, were ahead of their time, planting the seeds necessary for the fertilization of ideas and ideologies that would come to define the second half of the 20th century and re-shape the sociopolitical maps of the planet.

In order to understand the achievements and accomplishments of historical figures such as Lamine Senghor and Rene Maran, familiarization with the concept of negritude itself is necessary. While many simply attribute the movement of negritude to a few individuals or particular historical events, in reality negritude is the combination of a plethora of ideological principles and aesthetic interests under one banner within the common theme of "blackness." In simplest terms, negritude can be defined as the coalescence of ideas stemming from the rise of self-affirming principles in Francophone black communities, with a particular interest in self-determination, literature, and philosophical principles deemed necessary in the understanding the existence of African-descended peoples in French-controlled societies. Defined by Leopold Sedor Senghor as the "sum of the total values of the civilization of the Black world," negritude in essence is blackness in an ontological sense according to this; the ideas presented regarding blackness in the Francophone, its aesthetic pursuits involving literature and poetry, and the political activism of the major members of its canon all point to black people in these environments. These topics would be the focus of a variety of intellectuals and aestheticists that would make their name in the negritude movement, publish numerous works on the subject and be extremely influential in the political activism and self-determination struggles in Africa following the end of the Second World War. The political ideologies of negritude were heavily influenced by the ideas and concepts of Marxism in its formation; considering the context of the experiences of many of the proponents of negritude, which included coming from spaces central to the exploitative capitalist systems that would come to define African colonialism, the rationale for these ideologies go in hand with the concepts themselves. Despite this, many proponents of Marxism were critical of negritude itself, primarily due to them viewing it as merely a "distraction" within the true struggle against classism led by the proletariat. Negritude as a result cannot be categorized alongside other black conceptual and ideological movements, such as the movements that would characterize the American Civil Rights movement in the post-war era, due to a relative lack of focus on the incorporation of the allies outside of those who were deemed to fall within the "sphere" of negritude. The focus of negritude on the concept of the state of being black within global society meshed alongside the aestheticism pursued by those such as Cesaire, Maran and the poet Leon Damas to form a potent coalition of ideas and beliefs that would come to define the later years of the 20th century. However, when the credits of this coalition are attributed, they generally speak to those who are known as the "Three Fathers" of the movement- Leopold Sedor Senghor, Aime Cesaire and Leon Damas- and even go so far as to pinpoint a specific meeting between the three in 1931 as the point which it the concept was formed. While this meeting was certainly important in the sense of the gathering of black intellectuals to discuss what they believed was the necessary course of action for the furthering of le negre in French society at the time, it is not an overstatement to argue the forming of a movement on a particular day is bordering on intellectual and historical dishonesty. In reality, the foundational framework for the establishment of the tenets and principles of negritude were being formed long prior to the meeting of the "Three Fathers" in Paris 1931, being led by numerous individuals whose own work in the realm of literature and political activism were the reasoning for the very possibility of the formation of the concept of negritude as it would come to be understood.