One thing that distinguishes a “great” film from a “good” one for me is the discussion it prompts on the drive home, and whether I’m still thinking about the film the next day. Was it merely entertaining, or did I learn anything from it? Did it make me think?
I saw Denzel Washington’s The Great Debaters last night. It is a thoroughly entertaining movie, well acted and beautifully filmed, with a decent script. Even better, the movie continues to make me think, and has prompted me to dig a little deeper into the history of race relations and civil rights in 20th century Texas and Oklahoma.
The Great Debaters, which has received a Golden Globe nomination for best dramatic movie, is the true story of the debate squad of Wiley College, an African-American school in Marshall, Texas, in the Depression-era 1930s. Washington plays the debate coach, Melvin B. Tolson, and Forest Whitaker is a campus theologian and local minister who is the father of one member of the squad. Under Tolson’s tutelage, the Wiley debate squad gains national attention, and in a day when separate but unequal was the norm, invitations to compete against white teams (in the movie, when his debaters refer to white collegians, Tolson corrects them, saying they are “Anglo-Saxons”).
I competed in high school debate, and my blogging partner, Rod Heggy, went to college on a debate scholarship and competed in the National Debate Tournament. In an early scene, Tolson draws a square with chalk on the classroom floor, the “Hot Spot.” Students step into the Hot Spot to speak extemporaneously and field cross-examination questions. It reminded me of an exercise my own speech coach employed in which students were called to the platform, handed a large grocery sack which contained numerous items, and required to reach into the sack, pull something out and give an impromptu speech about that object.
However, despite the title, The Great Debaters is not primarily about collegiate debate. Debaters may complain that the movie fails to reveal much about the process and art of debating. They may observe, as some reviewers have, that the African-American debaters were conveniently assigned debate topics that always involved race relations and civil rights, and that they always drew the “right” side of those topics. True enough, but such comments miss the point.
The Great Debaters is not a story about college debate; it is about race relations in the generation immediately preceding the modern civil rights movement. The film uses college debating as a story device to illuminate the great race debate that has always been a prominent thread of American history. When the majority uses the force of law to deprive a minority of their God-given rights, how should the minority respond? Should they exercise moderation and patience? Should they employ civil disobedience? Resort to violence? The debaters wrestle with these questions on the platform and in real life. If the modern civil rights movement began in 1954 with Brown v Board of Education, The Great Debaters gives a glimpse of the sickening Jim Crow days of the segregated South in which the great civil rights leaders were born and raised.
Some (including Washington himself) have compared The Great Debaters to the slough of sports movies about small schools that win state championships against great odds. Others have placed it in the “great teacher” genre (To Sir With Love, Dead Poets Society, countless others). But most of the The Great Debaters does not occur in classrooms or at debate tournaments, but in the real world. One of the most haunting scenes is a confrontation between white and black families after the black family accidentally hits and kills a pig while driving down a country road. As that scene and others illustrate, a black man in the segregated South literally had no rights, for the “law” was squarely behind the white man, regardless of what he chose to do to a black man.
Another emotion-charged scene is a conversation between two young African-Americans, as they recall an earlier scene in which they witnessed a lynching. Volumes are spoken in the question one of the black teens asks: “I wonder what he did wrong?” referring to the man who had been lynched. What an atrocity to foster a culture in which racism is so pervasive that when a black teen witnesses the gruesome murder of a black man by a hate-filled white mob, he is led to wonder what the black man did wrong.
The movie prompted me to learn more about Melvin B. Tolson and James L. Farmer Jr. I was surprised to discover that Tolson spent the last 20 years of his life teaching at Langston University in Langston, Okla., just 30 miles from my home. James L. Farmer Jr., who in the movie is a prodigious 14-year-old college student, went on to become the founder of the Congress of Racial Equality. Farmer was a courageous freedom fighter who championed non-violent civil disobedience and who had a huge influence on the civil rights movement and on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Farmer’s philosophy of civil disobedience is foreshadowed in a stirring speech the young debater gives in the movie’s climactic scene.
The Great Debaters is a great movie. It is not a great exposition of college debating or classroom mentorship, and it brings nothing new regarding underdogs rising above humble beginnings. What it does do is depict an important chapter in race relations in our not-so-distant past, and introduce us to remarkable men like Tolson and Farmer. The inspirational story here is not about a debate contest won or lost, but about men and women such as these who did not allow legally enforced racism to prevent them from being the people God created them to be, and making their mark in this world.
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MORE NOTES ON THE GREAT DEBATERS
• Another memorable scene is an argument that erupts between Farmer Sr. the theologian and Tolson the debate coach. The minister is concerned about Tolson’s left-wing politics. Tolson responds, “Jesus was a radical,” to which Farmer shouts back, “Are you comparing yourself to Jesus?” According to my research, that scene may misrepresent Farmer Sr. His son, Farmer Jr., did say that his father advocated a more moderate approach than the path of civil disobedience Farmer Jr. pursued. However, according to Tolson’s writings, it was in fact Farmer Sr. who presented “a vivid picture of Jesus the young rebel” in a 1938 Mother’s Day sermon.
• Denzel Washington also directed The Great Debaters. It is his second time in the director’s chair (after Antwone Fisher in 2002). The Great Debaters has some beautiful shots. One that particularly caught my eye is toward the end of the movie, when the debate team boards a train in Texas to head for the climactic debate at Harvard University. As the train leaves the station, it moves into the heavily wooded terrain of east Texas. Washington gives us an aerial view of acres of green trees into which the train disappears, except for billows of gray smoke pouring from the engine, marking the train’s path through the lush greenery. I loved that shot.
• Jurnee Smollett plays the first and only female member of the Wiley debate squad. I see from her bio that Smollett, 21, has been playing TV roles since she was 5, so she is already a veteran actor. She is not only beautiful but quite talented, and I expect her to become a star.
• Denzel Washington recently gave an interview about his Christian faith and the role his faith plays in his movie career. See: Denzel Washington’s Ministry of Movies.