Négritude

Négritude, a concept developed in the 1930s by a group that included future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor and Francophone poet Aimé Césaire, is the belief that one should identify one's blackness without reference to one's homeland, native language, religion or spatial/geographical location. It was designed to help all those with black heritage to celebrate their blackness without confining this celebration to a single nation, geographical location or cultural group. Definitions of this concept have varied as have those who have embraced it. American Langston Hughes was one of the first Americans to adhere to the concept of négritude, and in his poetry and short stories, the feeling of blackness is everpresent. He argued that those people who didn't want to be black, who were ashamed of their heritage, were no better than racists.