Léon-Gontran Damas

Léon-Gontran Damas was born on the twenty-eighth of March 1912 at Cayenne, in the French colony of French Guiana, the son of an Afro-Guianese-French civil-servant household of the principal Cayenne post-emancipation civil administration of the closing decade of the late colonial period. He was raised in the Catholic working-class Cayenne community of the closing years of the First World War period.

He was placed at six at the principal Cayenne public schools and at the principal Lycée Pétion at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe for the closing portion of the colonial secondary education from 1924 to 1928 — and at the Lycée Schoelcher at Fort-de-France from 1928 to 1930 — where he was a contemporary of Aimé Césaire (placed in this archive).

He took the post-graduate Paris bursary classes of the École Normale Supérieure preparatory programme at Paris from 1930 to 1932 — among the closing-period Caribbean-and-French-African inter-war Paris bursary students of the closing years of the inter-war period.

He co-founded in 1934 at Paris — together with Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor — the principal Pan-African Négritude literary-political programme of the closing years of the inter-war period.

He published in 1937 the principal poetic monograph of his early career — Pigments — at the principal Paris closing-period literary publisher Guy Lévis Mano. The Pigments was the principal post-1934 Pan-African Négritude poetic monograph of the closing years of the inter-war period and the principal foundational poetic text of the closing years of the Négritude programme.

The Pigments was banned by the French colonial administration of the closing months of 1937 — and was the principal post-1934 Pan-African banned-literature of the closing years of the inter-war period.

He served the French Resistance during the closing years of the Vichy administration of France from 1942 to 1944.

He was elected in 1948 the principal French Guiana deputy of the French National Assembly — and served the French National Assembly from 1948 to 1951.

He served from 1951 to 1968 as the principal UNESCO Education-and-Cultural Affairs senior officer at the principal post-war UNESCO Paris closing-period programmes of the closing years of the post-war period.

He relocated to Washington, D.C. in 1968 at the principal Howard University Department of French Studies appointment — among the principal Black-Caribbean senior university appointments of the post-war period. He held the Howard University French Studies chair from 1968 to 1978.

He published across the closing years of the post-war period the principal late poetry monographs of his career — Black-Label (1956), and the principal Névralgies (1972) — both at the principal Paris closing-period publisher Présence Africaine.

He was the principal Pan-African Négritude poetic figure of the closing years of the post-war period and the principal foundational Pan-African Négritude-poetic source-text of the closing years of the post-1960 Pan-African intellectual programmes.

He died at Washington, D.C. on the twenty-second of January 1978 of complications of cancer, at sixty-five.

He is honored here as the principal Pan-African Négritude poet.