Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) was a writer and politician born in Martinique. A staunch anti-colonialist, he was the founder of the Negritude literary movement, a term he also coined: “the consciousness of being black, the simple recognition of a fact that implies acceptance, the assumption of responsibility for one's destiny as a black person, for one's history, for one's culture; it is the affirmation of an identity, of a solidarity, of a fidelity to a set of black values.” André Breton was a staunch admirer of Aimé Césaire's poetry, whose work, close to Surrealism, includes titles such as Cahier d'un retour au pays natal, The Miraculous Arms and And the dogs were being carried away.In 1947, he created, with Alioune Diop, the magazine African PresenceAs a politician, he was mayor of Fort-de-France, beginning his term in 1945, the same year he joined the French Communist Party.