The Legacy of Aimé Césaire

I first heard about Aimé Césaire in the Francophone Cultures course that I took at Hamilton College my freshman year. We learned about the "Négritude" and the two other founders of the movement, Léopold Senghor and Léon Gontian Damas. We read Cahier d'un retour au pays natal. We watched a movie about Césaire's life. It was then that I heard the famous phrase for the very first time: "Il est beau et bon et légitime d'être Nègre."
As a senior at Hamilton I chose to examine Tropiques, a cultural revolutionary review published by Césaire, his wife Suzanne, and other intellectuals under the Vichy regime in Martinique. Tropiques were a collection of short texts, poems, and letters that portrayed the particularities of the West Indies, but at a closer look - criticized the regime. The authors used surrealist writings as a means to convey the "second meaning." Publishing of Tropiques was interrupted in 1943 and the review depicted as "révolutionnaire, raciale et sectaire." More issues came out of press by 1945.Poet, playwright, and politician, Aimé Césaire is one of the most influential authors from the French-speaking Caribbean. In his works he promoted his homeland, and his racial and cultural heritage. He aimed at "restoring the cultural identity of black Africans." (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cesaire.htm)

Below I am pasting Césaire's abbreviated biography
(based on: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/594):

Aimé Césaire was born June 25, 1913, in Basse-Pointe, a small town on the northeast coast of Martinique in the French Caribbean. He attended the Lycée Schoelcher in Martinique, and the Parisian schools Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. As a student he and his friend, Léopold Senghor of Sénégal created L'Etudiant noir, a publication that brought together students of Africa and the West Indies. Later, with his wife, Suzanne Roussi, Césaire co-founded Tropiques, a journal dedicated to American black poetry. Both journals were a stronghold for the ideas of Negritude.He served as Mayor of Fort-de-France as a member of the Communist Party, and later quit the party to establish his Martinique Independent Revolution Party. He was deeply involved in the struggle for French West Indian rights and served as the deputy to the French National Assembly. He retired from politics in 1993. Césaire died on April 17, 2008 in Martinique.

During my week-long stay in Fort-de-France in September, on numerous occasions I noticed that Aimé Césaire is still present in the life of the Martiniquais. Streets, cultural centers, and the Town Hall, all directly or indirectly carry the poet's thought. The selected photos are just a sample of this presence.