The gathering additionally reveals how shut he was to many different influential writers of the Negritude motion. “To the outdated Leopold Sedar Senghor,” begins a humorous notice scribbled by the Martinican poet and author Aimé Césaire, in a replica of his “Discourse on Colonialism,” printed in 1950. “I’m certain that regardless of his political affiliations, he hates colonization, harmful of cultures and civilizations.”
Earlier than he died in 2001, Senghor, who was the president of Senegal from 1960 to 1980, donated a majority of his manuscripts to the Nationwide Library of France in 1979. His remaining libraries have been dispersed amongst his estates in Dakar, Paris and Normandy, the place he spent the final 20 years of his life together with his spouse, Colette Hubert. In that home, after the tip of his presidency, Senghor spent lengthy hours in his library learning and writing letters till his closing days. Hubert donated the home, which is offered for the general public to go to, and its contents to the city of Verson when she died in 2019.
Final 12 months, the Senegalese authorities purchased a few of Senghor’s different belongings, together with jewellery, army decorations and diplomatic presents. These objects are at present being saved on the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar.
Céline Labrune-Badiane, a historian, was amongst those that raised alarm in regards to the necessity of retaining the gathering collectively when the public sale was first made public. “It was already dispersed,” she stated. “It’s a very good factor that a few of them are actually going to be reunited in Dakar.”
It’s unclear the place the books will probably be saved or if they are going to be accessible to students.
Nonetheless, Mouhamadou Moustapha Sow, a historian on the Cheikh Anta Diop College in Dakar, stated that the arrival of Senghor’s objects was a welcome return.
“The primary downside we face as African historians is entry to postcolonial archives,” he stated. “Bringing again the heritage of Senghor is a reconquest of our cultural sovereignty.”
