Negritude, an ideological movement that developed in France in the 1930s, during an era of decreasing colonial power, was based on two principal beliefs: the ennoblement of the black (then generally called Negro) race in response to racist attitudes and the revaluation of African civilizations. It is most commonly associated with the Martinican poet and politician Aimé Césaire, the Senegalese poet and first president of his country Léopold Sédar Senghor, and the poet and politician Léon-Gontran Damas from French Guyana, although many others contributed significantly to the movement's birth.
African-American writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston, to name but a few, would influence the Negritude movement greatly. Their belief in
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Citation: Jahn, Jennifer. "Négritude". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 February 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1722, accessed 22 November 2024.]
