Quote by Léopold Sédar Senghor: “Emotion is African as Reason is Hellenic.”

Senghor was challenging the colonial idea that African cultures were 'primitive' and that rational thought was exclusively European. He argued that emotion, intuition, and feeling are not weaknesses but powerful ways of knowing — and that African civilisations had always understood this. It is a reclamation, not a concession.

The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists convened in Paris in 1956, bringing together intellectuals from Africa, the Caribbean, and the African diaspora. African independence movements were gaining momentum and thinkers were actively constructing frameworks for Black cultural identity outside the terms set by European colonialism.

Senegalese poet, politician, and philosopher who became the first President of Senegal in 1960. He was a co-founder of the Négritude movement, which celebrated African cultural identity in response to French colonial assimilation policies, and the first African elected to the Académie française.