Negritude advocated by African leaders and poets was a literary movement of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. The French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in Paris started a protest against French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation. Léopold Sédar Senghor, the elected first president of the Republic of Senegal in 1960 was one of its most influencial personalities together with Aimé Césaire from Martinique and Léon Damas from French Guiana. They examined Western values with a critical view and reevaluated African culture.