David Mandessi Diop was one of the most promising French West African poets known for his contribution to the Négritude

Négritude

Négritude is a literary and ideological movement, developed by francophone black intellectuals, writers, and politiciansin France in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas.The Négritude...

 literary movement. His work reflects his hatred of colonial rulers and his hope for an independent Africa.

David Diop was born in Bordeaux

Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...

, France of a Senegalese father and a Cameroon

Cameroon

Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...

ian mother. He had his primary education in Senegal. He started writing poems while he was still in school, and his poems started appearing in Présence Africaine

Présence Africaine

Présence africaine is a panafrican quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris and founded by Alioune Diop in 1947. In 1949, Présence africaine expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on the rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter of Paris...

since he was just 15. Several of his poems were published in Léopold Senghor's famous anthology, which became a landmark of modern black writing in French. He died in a plane crash in 1960.