Aimé Césaire

It was September 1931, in Paris, at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand.

An eighteen-year-old from Martinique had just arrived to prepare for France's elite schools. His name was Aimé Césaire.

In the school's corridors, he met another student. Léopold Sédar Senghor.

It was the beginning of a long friendship. And the beginning of a word.

Aimé had been born on June 26, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, Martinique. He had six brothers and sisters.

His father was a tax inspector. His mother was a dressmaker. His grandmother, known as Mamie Nini, could read and write. She taught her grandchildren to do the same.

The boy went to school in Basse-Pointe. Then a scholarship sent him to the Lycée Victor-Schœlcher, in Fort-de-France.

He was not happy there. In the town, he saw prejudice of colour and of class. It troubled him.

In Paris, he also grew close to Léon-Gontran Damas. They talked about French poetry.

In September 1934, with other students from the Caribbean and Africa, they founded a journal: L'Étudiant noir.

It was in its pages that the word "negritude" was born. A word coined by Césaire.

In 1935, he passed the entrance exam for the École normale supérieure. In 1937, he married Suzanne Roussi.

In August 1939, a Paris journal published a long poem: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. He was twenty-six.

That same year, he went home to Martinique. He taught at the Lycée Schœlcher, the school of his own youth. Among his students were Frantz Fanon and Édouard Glissant.

People said he was a teacher much listened to and admired.

In 1941, with Suzanne and friends, he founded the journal Tropiques in Fort-de-France. The poet André Breton, passing through the town, discovered it.

Then came 1945. Césaire was elected mayor of Fort-de-France and deputy for Martinique.

He remained a deputy until 1993. He remained mayor until 2001. More than fifty-five years in the service of his city.

On March 19, 1946, a law made Martinique a French department. He was one of its chief architects.

In 1950 came his Discourse on Colonialism. A text against European colonial practices.

In 1956, after the crushing of the Hungarian revolution, he left the Communist Party. He announced it in his Letter to Maurice Thorez. Two years later, he founded the Martinican Progressive Party.

He also wrote for the theatre. In 1963 came The Tragedy of King Christophe.

Negritude, for him, was a humanism, turned toward all the oppressed. This thought, born of the Caribbean and of Paris, has its own history. It echoes Ubuntu without merging with it: each person's dignity passes through the dignity of others.

Aimé Césaire died in Fort-de-France on April 17, 2008. He was ninety-four.

Three days later, a state funeral was held at the Stade de Dillon. Pierre Aliker gave the eulogy.

On April 6, 2011, a plaque bearing his name was unveiled in the Panthéon, in Paris.

He left behind a word, born in a student journal. And a city, which he served for more than half a century.