Senghor, Léopold (1906—2001) Senegalese poet and politician. Regarded by many as one of the most important intellectuals in Africa in the twentieth century, Senghor was the first president of Senegal, following its independence from France. Prior to that he was, like his friend Césaire, Aimé (who represented Martinique in the same period) Senegal’s representative in the National Assembly in France. Senghor met Césaire as a student in Paris. The two of them, along with fellow student Léon Damas, from French Guiana, founded the literary review L’Étudiant noir (The Black Student), which was one of the first serials to give critical attention to black writers. It was in the third issue of this journal that the word with which his name would become most closely associated, namely négritude (blackness), was used. Coined by Césaire, but rapidly adopted by Senghor, négritude is an early example of the strategy gay rights activists would later deploy to good effect, the adoption of a negative or derogatory term and its transformation into a positive. In 1948, Senghor compiled and edited a volume of Francophone poetry called Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, (Anthology of New Black and Malagasy Poetry) which was introduced by Sartre, Jean-Paul’s now famous essay ‘Orphée Noir’ (Black Orpheus).