# Présence Africaine Founded (c. 1947)

URL: https://allhistories.com/senegal/timeline/1947-presence-africaine-founded
Location: Paris, France
Themes: main-event

Alioune Diop, born in Saint-Louis in 1910, was a teacher and briefly a senator of the Fourth Republic, part of the circle of African intellectuals in Paris around Senghor. He believed that African peoples needed a platform where they could present their own cultures and ideas to the world rather than being described only by Europeans. In late 1947 he launched the review Présence Africaine, published simultaneously in Paris and Dakar, with support from leading French intellectuals including André Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Michel Leiris and Théodore Monod. Its first issue appeared at the end of 1947. In 1949 Diop added a publishing house of the same name and a bookshop in the Latin Quarter. Présence Africaine became the central institution of Black intellectual life in the French-speaking world, publishing Senghor, Césaire, Cheikh Anta Diop, Mongo Beti, Frantz Fanon and many others. It organised the Congresses of Black Writers and Artists in 1956 and 1959, and Alioune Diop later inspired the World Festival of Negro Arts held in Dakar in 1966. At this point in the timeline (1947), the President of the French Republic was Vincent Auriol (16 January 1947 – 16 January 1954); the Governor-General of French West Africa was René Victor Marie Barthes (May 1946 – 27 January 1948); the Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal (French West Africa) was Laurent Marcel Wiltord (20 May 1947 – 19 October 1950).

## Why it matters
Présence Africaine gave African and diaspora writers their own publishing voice and became a pillar of Pan-African culture.

Ruler at the Time: [Vincent Auriol](https://allhistories.com/senegal/rulers/vincent-auriol)

Governor-General of French West Africa: René Victor Marie Barthes
Lieutenant-Governor of Senegal (French West Africa): Laurent Marcel Wiltord

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Présence Africaine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Présence_Africaine)
- [Wikipedia — Alioune Diop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alioune_Diop)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Presence Africaine](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Presence+Africaine)
- [Wikipedia — Decolonisation And Independence (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali_Federation)