ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the Senegalese protests in the context of the worldwide social movement in May 1968. 1 Along with Prague, Colombia, Chicago, and Paris, Dakar, Senegal’s capital, was a key site of the global youth protest. The labor movement, up until May ’68, had posed the most serious threat to the government of Senegal. The University of Dakar drew students from France and almost all of Francophone Africa, and Dakar thus became part of the intellectual and ideological confrontation between East and West in Africa. “May ’68” questioned the economic and political conditions in Senegal, as well as ideological matters on a broader scale. Striking students and workers expressed the needs of a changing African society and responded to global issues, exemplified by the question of Vietnam. Besides the specific causes of the protests in Senegal, this chapter examines the reactions of the state and the general populace to the crisis, the counterculture trend developed by the May actors, and how May ’68 in Senegal is comparable to May ’68 in France and the rest of the world.
