He gave me a little pamphlet he had written about the European conquest of Africa. The sentiment was quaint and naïve, like the human figures stamped on old-fashioned plates.... Senghor took me to the international building for seamen in Marseilles. It was newly opened by Communists—a vast place, complete with bar, kitchen, theater and recreation room. In the reading room there were newspapers in nearly all of the occidental and oriental languages. There were a few seamen, Scandinavian, French, Annamites, Spanish, but no Negroes, present. Senghor talked to the manager and said it was their job to get the Negroes to come to the International Seamen's building. But the building was far out of the center of the town and the Negroes preferred the international beehive of the Vieux Port. Yet the Negroes had hard industrial problems to face in Marseilles. On the boats they were employed as stokers only, and they were not employed on those boats making the "good" runs: that is, the short runs, which the white seamen preferred. Also as dockers they were discriminated against and given the hardest and most unpleasant jobs, such as loading and unloading coal and sulphur. The Negroes complained against the unions: Senghor told them the unions were Socialist unions and that they should become Communists.
One afternoon I listened in on a conversation in black and white between Senghor and the café owner. I think it is worth recording here. Senghor had been gassed in the war and he was consumptive. He was married to a Frenchwoman who was devoted to and was dutifully taking care of him.
Said the café owner to Senghor: "But say, listen: I don't see how you can become a great Negro leader when you are married to a white woman." Senghor replied that he felt even more bitterly about the condition of Negroes because he was married to a white woman; and as Communism was international, it was an international gesture for him to be married to a white woman, especially since white chauvinists objected to intermarriage. "And what about you," Senghor asked the café owner, "aren't you living with a white woman?"
"Yes, but I am not aiming to be a leader," said the café owner. "But you are aiming to be. If you are a real true leader, if the Negroes see it on the outside and feel it on the inside, they will surely follow you, and if the men follow you, their women must follow them. For you can't uplift men without uplifting women. And colored women will not follow Negro leaders who are married to white women. Especially when white women everywhere have more social freedom and privileges than colored women. How many white leaders are there anywhere who are married to colored women? They couldn't be and remain leaders. They love our women, but they don't marry them.
"Now take our Deputy Diagne. Before Diagne, all our leaders used to be mulattoes. But the mulattoes did everything for the whites and nothing at all for the blacks. So we blacks, being more than they, we got together and said: 'Let's elect a black man; he might do better.' But as soon as we elected Diagne and sent him to Paris, right away he married a white woman. Now his mulatto children despise us black Senegalese. Now if Deputy Diagne had a colored wife for his hostess in Paris, wouldn't that be propaganda helping our women and our race? But I think the French preferred Diagne to have a white wife, rather than have a colored woman as a political hostess in Paris. Soon as we tried to do something for ourselves as a group, they did something else to make our action ineffective."
Senghor closed his eyes and scratched his head and opened his eyes and said that his countryman's idea was interesting and he would have to think the subject over from another point of view.
"It's not just a color problem, but a human problem," said the café owner. "Why, suppose all the big Frenchmen took English wives and disregarded the French women! I tell you there would be another French Revolution."
At that moment the French companion of the proprietor entered the café. Embarrassed, the two Senegalese shut up. The woman went over to the proprietor and leaned affectionately upon his shoulder. He reached up and patted her. It was a strange scene, after that strange conversation, and it made me feel queer. Sentimentally, I was confused; intellectually, I was lost.