A Playlet on Black Historical Memory

By: Majekodunmi Oseriemen Ebhohon

CAST

• KOFI – Quick-witted teen; sarcastic and deeply insecure
  
• TISHA – Street-smart and cynical, guarded from disappointment
  
• OMAR – Curious but hesitant; a reader with quiet fire
  
• PROFESSOR LUMUMBA – Elder historian, enigmatic, almost shamanic
  
• SPIRIT VOICES – Ancestral chorus (off-stage or recorded)

SCENE ONE — THE LAUGHING ROOM

A dusty community classroom. Books stacked. A broken chalkboard bears the word: “TRUTH?”

KOFI (reading aloud, snorting)

Septimius Severus… Black emperor of Rome (gets up, strikes a Roman pose)

Ave, my niggas. Welcome to Wakanda-Rome!

TISHA (laughs hard)

Please! Next they’ll say Black folks invented the moon!

OMAR

Guys, seriously, Herodotus did write that Egyptians were Black. He saw it himself.

KOFI

Oh, and next we’ll find out Shakespeare was Yoruba.

TISHA (snickering)

Or that we taught the Greeks and they gave us… colonization in return.

OMAR (still reading)

It says “The Library of Timbuktu held thousands of manuscripts before Oxford was born.”

KOFI

Sure. And I’m King Tut’s grandson.

TISHA

You’re barely your father’s son.

They all laugh.

---

SCENE TWO — THE REVEALING

The door creaks. PROFESSOR LUMUMBA enters slowly. He holds a worn leather pouch.

PROF. LUMUMBA (to no one, calmly)

Laughter is medicine. But like all medicine, it can kill, if taken in excess.

The room falls silent.

KOFI

Sorry sir. We were just…

PROF. LUMUMBA

…laughing away your inheritance.

Prof. Lumumba pulls out a small, ancient tablet carved with symbols – the Ankh, Nsibidi, Mdw Ntr.

OMAR

What is that?

PROF. LUMUMBA

A memory. Written when the sea had no name.

Before Plato. Before Homer.

We wrote laws. Measured stars. Practiced surgery.

TISHA (quietly)

My brother once told me… “We come from kings.”

I laughed in his face.

Now I feel… ashamed.

PROF. LUMUMBA

Shame is not your burden. It was planted.

But truth… is water. And water breaks stone.

He stretches out his hand to hand over the tablet. Omar, stretching out his hand, steps forward to collect it.

PROF. LUMUMBA (fatherly)

My son, the drum is not beaten for the one whose feet already dance.

He pulls the tablet back softly, turning instead to the other two. He hands it to them.

---

SCENE THREE — THE AWAKENING

Lights dim. SPIRIT VOICES echo from beyond.

SPIRIT VOICE 1

Before they raised empires, we raised pyramids.

SPIRIT VOICE 2

Before they found God, we carved divinity in gold.

OMAR

We weren’t discovered…

We were covered.

KOFI

Not lost…

Just buried beneath lies.

TISHA

And now we dig.

And we remember.

PROF. LUMUMBA

Now I ask you: what do you do with a stolen name… once you remember it?

ALL THREE

We speak it.

We wear it.

We teach it.

A drumbeat rises. The stage glows gold. The Ankh shines faintly in Tisha’s hand.

FINAL SPIRIT VOICE

We were not footnotes.

We were the first chapter.

END OF PLAYLET