Aimé Césaire

Aimé Fernand David Césaire (; French: [ɛme fɛʁnɑ̃ david sezɛʁ]; 26 June 1913 – 17 April 2008) was an Afro-Martinican French poet, author, and politician. He was one of the founders of the Négritude movement in Francophone literature and coined the word "négritude" in French. He founded the Parti progressiste martiniquais in 1958, and served in the French National Assembly from 1945 to 1993 and as President of the Regional Council of Martinique from 1983 to 1988. He was also the Mayor of Fort-de-France for 56 years, from 1945 to 2001. His works include the book-length poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939), Une Tempête, a response to William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, and Discours sur le colonialisme (Discourse on Colonialism), an essay describing the strife between the colonizers and the colonized.