Leopold Sedar Senghor

Leopold Sedar Senghor, beyond his standing as a poet and a founding theorist of the Negritude literary and cultural movement, became the first President of the Republic of Senegal, elected on 5 September 1960 as the country gained independence from France, and served until his voluntary retirement on 31 December 1980, when he handed power to his chosen successor Abdou Diouf, one of very few African heads of state of his generation to leave office by choice rather than by death, coup or defeat. He governed as an African socialist, and over the course of his presidency moved toward an authoritarian single-party system before easing those controls in his later years. He is also the author of the Senegalese national anthem.