Though the same thing may also be said about most other cultures, within African-based cultures, there have always been at least two prime ingredients: the drum and the seer/sayers. Though recent historical documentation has made it clear that mankind itself is African, thus all human beings are African descendants, since at least the 16th and 17th centuries, mankind has been divided into cultural groups by who could be the most violent as the dominant entity.
African American and African Caribbean cultures (including most South Americans) have an ever-present need for the seer, sooth-sayer, reader and guide more than the dominant military leader. Within any Black-person dominated culture there is always the presence of the parableist, the singer and the writer. These are the carriers of whatever survival knowledge has been learned and taught to the young.
African folk must have writers, singers and historical guides to learn from and to understand their past, present and futures—to document their lives. African Americans have excelled at producing legions of such wisdom-guides ( a proper list would require several books). No matter the extreme horrors of slavery and Jim Crowism in all of their dimensions, African Americans writers, truth-tellers, historians, etc., have always been present and active to help us understand and keep moving on.
In spite of our seeming to have forgotten such inputs nowadays, or unwisely confusing rap artists as the new soothsayers and guides, standing just outside of the major headlines and apparently the gaze of Donald Trump and company, Black writers and truth-tellers are still thriving, surviving and multiplying.
The 2024 and 2025 Pulitzer Prizes in historical writing and playrighting, for example, were won by African American female writers: Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black, the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History for “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War.”
Eboni Booth won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, “Primary Trust.” Jacqueline Jones won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book, “No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era.” Brother Jonathan Eig was the co-winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his book, “King: A Life.”
Additionally, Trina Reynolds-Tyler and Sarah Conway were co-winners of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for investigating the case of missing Black women and girls in Chicago.
We must continue to “Tell the truth, and shame the devil” as our elders used to tell us. People must know themselves to save themselves. And let the church say, amen.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
