Mark

Aimй Cйsaire was born in Martinique in 1931, in Basse-Pointe. His family was not fortunate enough to have that much money, so money wasn’t something that was cherished in the family. Something that was important to the family was an education. This aspect was one of the most influential things in Cйsaire’s life. Cйsaire’s education consisted His primary education originated from his hometown school and later he moved on to the capitol, Port-de-France to receive his secondary education and baccalaureat. His grades led him into the path of a scholarship for continuing education in a school in France by the name of Lycee Louis-le-grand. This acceptance played an important role in his life because it brought him, Leopold Sedar Senghor and Leon Damas together. There great minds which were known as The Trios Pиres, or The Three Fathers, founding fathers, of negritude. This trio worked together to write the piece, “The Black Student.” This piece was used to bring together the blacks of the world, to unite them. Regardless of where you are from, this was the beginning in creating a sort of unity between all these peoples. Like many wars, and socio/economic actions, there is always a building up before there is change. This is how the start of Negritude began. Negritude began back during the imperialism in the early 1500’s of Africa and the beginning of slavery. For about 150 years slavery had dominated as being raw and uncontrolled until 1665 where a code of treatment of slaves was created known as The Black Code (Le Code Noir). 100 years later, slavery being a big issue, in 1789, the French Revolution had begun. This was the beginning of the process in freeing the blacks to their original position, free. The first in this process was Haiti. Something that Cesaire held inside him was a hatred for what had occurred in the past with the imperialism and slavery. “Cesaire parallels the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized with the relationship between Nazis and their victims” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cesaire.htm)

An idea is like cancer and gets spread to all corners of the body, or in a particular case, the world. This reference is to revolutionary and enlightening ideas. Just as the French were influenced by the independence of the colonies of England into the United States, there were many influences on the movement of negritude through Aime Cesaire. One such