Cheikh Anta Diop is a historian, anthropologist, Egyptologist, and politician. A student at the Sorbonne University, in Nations Nègres et Culture (1954), he demonstrated the African origins of Egyptian civilization and the antiquity of Africa's contribution to world civilization. His work reflects the importance for Africans to produce their own historical and scientific research to counter racist theories. Returning to Senegal in 1960, he was deprived of a teaching position at the university that now bears his name. A Pan-Africanist, he became an incorruptible political opponent of President Léopold Sédar Senghor, who briefly imprisoned him. Until his death, Cheikh Anta Diop produced important works on the cultural unity of Africa and gave numerous lectures calling for Africa to be its own epistemological center.
