Négritude

The 1930s Paris movement of Francophone Black students that made Blackness a proud poetic category.

Specifications & Metrics

era

c. 1930 – 1960

region

Paris, Senegal, Martinique

key figures

Aimé Césaire, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Léon-Gontran Damas

exemplar

Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939); Hosties noires (1948)

introduced

1935

Core Principles & Analysis

• Césaire coined the word in his 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land.
• It began among Caribbean and African students in 1930s Paris.
• Senghor carried it into statecraft and a theory of African socialism.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Négritude