In 1946 he was elected to the French National Assembly as a Socialist Deputy and after Senegal became autonomous in 1958 he was elected President. Together with the writers Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas he formulated the concept of négritude, which he defined as “the sum total of cultural values of the Negro-African world”. In 1960 he sought unsuccessfully to achieve federation among the former French West African colonies and in 1975 Senegal joined the West African Economic Community. His collections of lyrical poetry include Chants d’ombre (1945), Nocturnes (1961), and Poèmes (1984).