Léopold Sédar Senghor – 1966 Lecture Publication with Signed Letter

A signed letter from Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first President of Senegal, along with a 1966 publication on the cultural movement of Négritude, with which he was associated.

Senghor held the post of President between 1960 and 1980, assuming the role after the country’s formal independence from France, and was also an active poet and intellectual figure throughout his life.

This is an original signed letter, on official letterhead dated 14 June 1966, addressed to Lody Aoueiss, the editor of a Beirut-based literary review called Les Cahiers d’Oronte. Senghor praises the review, noting that he shared it with the Association of Senegalese Writers, and proposes ties between the two literary communities “to strengthen Lebanese-Senegalese friendship.”

Aoueiss was a Lebanese editor, translator and director who was active in the 1960s to the 1980s. The Cahiers was a French-language cultural publication that was issued in Beirut between the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.

Together with the letter is a 56-page publication by Senghor entitled La négritude est un humanisme du XXème siècle, published by Les Conférences du Cénacle in Beirut in 1966. Text in French and Arabic.

Négritude, literally translated as ‘Blackness’, was a movement founded in the 1930s by African diaspora figures in France, including Senghor. It rejected colonialism, racism and European influence while adopting a leftist political stance and philosophy. Senghor was later the first African to become a member of the prestigious Academie Francaise.

Material from this relatively early period of his Presidency is quite rare. In very good condition, some minor edgewear and tanning. Also comprises the original envelope containing the signed letter.