Aimé Césaire was born in Basse-Pointe in 1913. He was an excellent student and won a scholarship to the Lycée Schoelcher in Fort-de-France, where he had a fine education before leaving Martinique in 1931 for Paris. There, he enrolled in a preparatory course for the École Normale Supérieure at the prestigious high school Lycée Louis Le Grand. It was here that he met Léopold Sédar Senghor, with whom he forged a close friendship.
Together with other West Indian and African students, Léon Gontran Damas and Birago Diop, they founded the magazine “L'Etudiant Noir" in 1934.
It was in this magazine that the term “negritude” first appeared.
This concept, built to combat the French colonial project, aimed to reject the French cultural assimilation project and the devaluation of Africa and its culture.
Studying at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris in 1935, he began writing “Cahier d’un Retour au Pays Natal” in 1936. This was the first book in a series of essays on the French colonial project.
After graduating from the ENS, Aimé Césaire returned to Martinique in 1939, where he became a teacher at the Lycée Schoelcher and published the literary magazine “Tropiques”.
