Senghor

Yesterday(Tuesday) our group focused on the life of Leopold Sedar Senghor, the first President of independent Senegal and a towering figure in the history of the country. An intellectual, a fierce proponent of all that is African, a shrewd politician, a hero of WWII, a seminal leader, and lastly perhaps more importantly, a poet of incomparable abilities. We visited the place of his birth in Djilor and then later, where he grew up in Joal. Both places near riverine and wetland environments which are featured prominently in his work.

He wrote a poem for Martin Luther King after his death and was a confidant/friend of many 20th century African American cultural giants....W.E.B. DuBois, Louis Armstrong, Richard Wright and many others.

Here is the elegy:

 It was the fourth of April, nineteen hundred and sixty-eight,
A spring evening in a grey neighborhood, a district smelling
Of garbage mud where children played in the streets in
spring,
And spring blossomed in the dark courtyards where blue
murmuring
Streams played, a song of nightingales in the ghetto night of
hearts.
Martin Luther King chose them, the motel, the district,
The garbage and the street sweepers, with the eyes of his heart
in those
Spring days, those days of passion wherever the mud of flesh
Would have been glorified in the light of Christ.
It was the evening when light is clearest and air sweetest,
Dusk at the heart's hour, and its flowering of secrets
Mouth to mouth, of organ and of hymns and incense.
On the balcony now haloed in crimson where the air
Is more limpid, Martin Luther stands speaking pastor to
pastor:
"My Brother, do not forget to praise Christ in his
resurrection
And let his name be praised!"
And now opposite him, in a house of prostitution,
profanation,
And perdition, yes, in the Lorraine Motel - Ah, Lorraine, ah
Joan, the white and blue woman, let our mouths purify you
Like rising incense!--In that evil house of tomcats and
pimps
A man stands up, a Remington rifle in his hands.
James Earl Ray sees the Reverend Martin Luther King,
Through his telescopic sight, sees the death of Christ: "My
brother,
Do not forget to magnify Christ in his resurrection this
evening!"
Sent by Judas, he watches him, for we have made the poor
into wolves
Of the poor. He looks through his telescopic sight, sees only
the tender
Neck so black and beautiful. He hates that golden voice
modulating
The angels' flutes, the voice of bronze trombone that
thunders on terrible
Sodom and on Adama. Martin looks ahead at the house in
front, he sees
The skyscrapers of light and glass, He sees curly, blond heads, dark,
Kinky heads full of dreams like mysterious orchids, and the
blue lips
And the roses sing in a chorus like a harmonious organ.
The white man looks hard and precise as steel. James Earl
aims
And hits the mark, shoots Martin, who withers like a
fragrant flower
And falls. "My brother, praise His Name clearly, may our
bones
Exult in the Resurrection!"of the country.

Quite an individual. Without him, this beautiful place might likely have never taken the peaceful political trajectory held up as a model for all fledgling post-colonial constructions. I know this is slightly lazy, but I shall let Wikipedia in all it's glory document his life here. Suffice to say this man was impressive beyond imagination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9opold_S%C3%A9dar_Senghor