Presidents of Senegal: Lopold Sdar Senghor

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Lopold Sdar Senghor (9 October 1906 20 December 2001) was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who served as the first president of Senegal (19601980). Senghor was the first African to sit as a member of the Acadmie franaise. 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. Lopold Sdar Senghor was born on 9 October 1906 in the small coastal city of Joal, some one hundred kilometres south of Dakar. Basile Diogoye Senghor, Lopold's father, was a businessman belonging to the bourgeois tribe Serer, a minority group in Senegal. Gnilane Ndim Bakhou, Lopold'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) 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-Gran... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=172067