Blood Debt • To Lamine Senghor
(Spoken poetic biography)
FLORIAN BOBIN
BLOOD DEBT
LAMINE ARFANG SENGHOR (1889-1927)
Lamine Senghor was a Communist-inspired anti-colonial activist from Senegal. 40 years before official political “independences,” he was already calling for Africa’s decolonization.
Born in Joal in 1889, Senghor came from a Serer peasant family and lived in the countryside until adulthood. In the 1910s, he moved to Dakar to work for a French firm, where he experienced the humiliations and vexations of colonial rule.
During World War 1 (1914-1918), Senghor joined the French army as a “colonial soldier.” After suffering a gas attack at Verdun, he was later evacuated back to Senegal in 1919.
In 1920, Senghor returned to France and found a job in Paris as a postman. At this time, Black Africans represented an isolated minority in France but started organising politically.
In 1924, Senghor joined the Inter-Colonial Union, a grouping affiliated to the French Communist Party. There, he met and exchanged with other anti-colonialists, like Hô Chi Minh and Messali Hadj.
In 1925, Senghor became a regular contributor to the Inter-Colonial Union’s newspaper, Le Paria. “It is not in colonialism’s interest to educate men it wants to exploit to the last drop of their blood,” he writes.
In 1926, Senghor denounced the lack of Black African representation within the French Communist Party. After resigning, he founded the Defence Committee of the Negro Race, the first Black association in France openly calling for African self-determination.
In 1927, Senghor published The Violation of a country, a short pamphlet retracing the history of European capitalism in Africa, from the slave trade to colonialism. It ends with a revolutionary prophecy on the liberation of all peoples from capitalist-imperialism.
In 1927, Senghor also attended the inaugural conference of The League against Imperialism. In his speech, he reaffirmed his position: “the complete freedom of African peoples and of African descent.”
Ever since the war, Senghor’s health deteriorated as a result of the gas attack at Verdun. In November 1927, Lamine Senghor died in Fréjus, aged 38.
How is it that you can breathe one second, and your comrade expires the next?
That you only wear this uniform for his heir not to mourn?
A quarter of those taken away with you became ancestors too soon.
From the groundnut fields of Kaolack to the battlefield of Verdun.
You will attain the same rights by shedding the same blood, they said.
Yours hasn’t left the humid soil of Reims.
After being stolen from, Blaise Diagne enforced solidarity.
After the Violation of a country, Bakary Diallo revisits his master’s virtues.
What if the chains are now from within?
What remains when so much of what you knew is now forbidden?
LAMINE ARFANG SENGHOR (1889-1927)
Lamine Senghor was a Communist-inspired anti-colonial activist from Senegal. 40 years before official political “independences,” he was already calling for Africa’s decolonization.
Born in Joal in 1889, Senghor came from a Serer peasant family and lived in the countryside until adulthood. In the 1910s, he moved to Dakar to work for a French firm, where he experienced the humiliations and vexations of colonial rule.
During World War 1 (1914-1918), Senghor joined the French army as a “colonial soldier.” After suffering a gas attack at Verdun, he was later evacuated back to Senegal in 1919.
In 1920, Senghor returned to France and found a job in Paris as a postman. At this time, Black Africans represented an isolated minority in France but started organising politically.
In 1924, Senghor joined the Inter-Colonial Union, a grouping affiliated to the French Communist Party. There, he met and exchanged with other anti-colonialists, like Hô Chi Minh and Messali Hadj.
In 1925, Senghor became a regular contributor to the Inter-Colonial Union’s newspaper, Le Paria. “It is not in colonialism’s interest to educate men it wants to exploit to the last drop of their blood,” he writes.
In 1926, Senghor denounced the lack of Black African representation within the French Communist Party. After resigning, he founded the Defence Committee of the Negro Race, the first Black association in France openly calling for African self-determination.
In 1927, Senghor published The Violation of a country, a short pamphlet retracing the history of European capitalism in Africa, from the slave trade to colonialism. It ends with a revolutionary prophecy on the liberation of all peoples from capitalist-imperialism.
In 1927, Senghor also attended the inaugural conference of The League against Imperialism. In his speech, he reaffirmed his position: “the complete freedom of African peoples and of African descent.”
Ever since the war, Senghor’s health deteriorated as a result of the gas attack at Verdun. In November 1927, Lamine Senghor died in Fréjus, aged 38.
June - July 2020. Vol nº1