“They Came Tonight” is a poem by the celebrated French Guyanese author Léon-Gontran Damas. He is renowned as one of the founders of the Négritude movement, along Aimé Césaire and Leopold Senghor. In 1935, the three men published the first issue of the literary review L’Étudiant Noir (The Black Student), which provided the foundation for what is now known as the Négritude Movement, a literary and ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating “Black consciousness” across Africa and its diaspora; this movement rejected the political, social and moral domination of the West.

“They Came Tonight” is a poem similar to ‘Ils Sont Venus’ de François Sengat-Kuo / ‘They Came’ by François Sengat-Kuo. In this case, it talks about when the Europeans came during slavery time, one night as the drums were thundering, and after that many Africans were taken away from their homes, from their loved ones, many were captured, and the day was never the same, history was never the same, families were destroyed, kingdoms destroyed, and to this day, Africa has not recovered for 400 years of slavery. This poem was first published in Pigments 1937, and later in Présence africaine, 1962.

 

Ils sont venus ce soir (Pour Léopold-Sedar Senghor) ils sont venus ce soir où le tam tam roulait de rythme en rythme la frénésie des yeux la frénésie des mains la frénésie des pieds de statues DEPUIS combien de MOI MOI MOI sont morts depuis qu’ils sont venus ce soir où le tam tam roulait de rythme en rythme la frénésie des yeux la frénésie des mains la frénésie des pieds de statues

They Came Tonight for Léopold-Sedar Senghor They came the night the drums spun from rhythm to rhythm the frenzy of eyes the frenzy of hands the frenzy of the feet of statues SINCE how many of ME ME ME are dead since they came that night when the drums spun from rhythm to rhythm frenzy of eyes frenzy of hands frenzy of the feet of statues