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Nakaya Thompson

Amory Orchard

English 103

3 April 2017

Minorities in the 1930s

Denzel Washington as Melvin B. Tolson once said, Gentlemen and lady, debate is

combat, but your weapons are words. Debate is blood sport, you must destroy your opponent,

not only verbally but physically. The Great Debaters depicts a black college that created a

debate team in which they go throughout the country beating all white colleges including, in the

end, Harvard. While the debate team is going through the country debating, they encounter a lot

of racism and adversity that could have affected their performance. They overcome things that

black people in our generation will hopefully never have to experience. It was made obvious that

being on their debate team was a huge honor, and they realized this and handled themselves with

grace through most of the movie. The representation of minorities in the movie the Great

Debaters is positive and gave many people of color hope during its time. The community

accepted the movie as hope during a time when they felt the end of racism was near. At first,

however, it was clear that the students werent completely ready for what they were getting into.

In the beginning of the movie, it shows the tryouts for the schools debate team. Because

they are an all-black school, the school is small but a large amount of these students tried out for

the debate team almost as if it was a sport. In the 1930s, debate was as respected as some sports

because of the valuable skills people believed it gave young people. At the tryouts, it is made

clear that Mr. Tolson, the debate teams coach, was very stringent about who he chose to be on
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his team. He acted this way for the very reason that debate was well respected and he wanted

people that would honor the title of debate team member.

Photo of: Tryouts in the home of Melvin B. Tolson.

There are times in the movie where it seems like the racism is a bit extreme especially in

the infamous lynching scene. During this scene, Mr. Tolson and the rest of the team are on their

way to a debate when they happen to pass through a bunch of white males that had just lynched

and set on fire a black man on a cross. I dont want to assume, but because of the context and the

movie being set during the great depression, Im going to assume that they were supposed to be

members of the KKK. I can do this because it was said that the police chief was in cahoots with

the klu klux klan.This movies focus on racial issues makes this scene infamous because if you

have ever seen it, it is difficult forget it.

There are often times in the movie where Mr. Tolson acts as a parent to one or all of his

team members. In one specific scene, Mr. Tolson is at an underground meeting in which they are

discussing creating a union for the farmers in their area and Mr. Tolson was there to mitigate the

meeting. James Farmer Jr., one of Tolsons students, follows him there and the meeting ends up
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getting broken up by a group of middle aged white males. Once this meeting begins to be broken

up, the white men are chasing the black men through the woods and somehow Tolson knew that

Mr. Farmer was present, saved him and took him back to his home. In this scene, it was made

obvious that Mr. Tolson was more then a debate teacher to his students. He became someone that

they could count on, they leaned on him throughout the movie.

In the end, the great debaters turns into a coming of age themed movie because they are

metaphorically thrown out of the nest. When they are finally summoned to debate against the

best debate team in the country, Mr. Tolson is not allowed to attend because of his previous run

in with the law. As a result, he is forced to stay at home while they go to Harvard to debate. This

means that they will not have their leader who wrote their talking points for all of their previous

debates along with them to prepare. In this debate, they were told that they would not get their

topic until the night before the debate because Harvard had learned that Mr. Tolson had been

writing their arguing points and they did not allow their debaters coaches to do so. It was made

obvious that the team had come a long way from the beginning and that they were ready for the

challenge that was ahead of them, even if they werent aware of this until the last possible

moment.

In their last debate, James Farmer Jr. (14 years old) debated against the reigning

champions of Harvard and in his speech, it was made obvious that he had grown from a boy into

a man. After being chased by the KKK and witnessing a lynching he was made aware of the

problems that he had been debating. In the end statement of the debate, James Farmer Jr. said

this(2:25:00),

In Texas, they lynch negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck,
and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floor
board. I looked at my teammates, I saw the fear in their eyes, and worse, the shame.
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What was this negros crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled
with fog? Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a negro? Was he a share cropper? A
preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and
do nothing? No matter what he did the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing,
just left us wondering, why. My opponent says that nothing that erodes the rule of law
can be moral, but there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when negroes are
denied housing, turned away from schools, hospitals, and not when we are lynched.
St. Augustine said, An unjust law, is no law at all. Which means I have a right, even
a duty to resist, with violence, or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the
latter.

The time period when this movie came out was essential to the context of the movie.

Even so, some people liked the overall concept, but many felt that the movie didnt use enough

facts to be considered based off a true story. Many people during this time felt that the details of

things like who they debated in the end and who the actual female was on the debate team were

essential to telling this story. There was also no discussion of the fact that for 10 years straight

Wiley College didnt lose one debate (between 1929 and 1939). We dont really know if this

story takes place in the beginning, middle, or end of this streak.

Lastly, its been said that the scene in which they debate the first white college on their

schedule, the debate went very different in real life. It was said that, unlike the movie, both

whites and blacks were rooting for both the white and black college. Tolson himself wrote, the

mixed audience seemed to forget their difference, applauding one team as readily as it applauded

another. In the South, I have seen the children of ex-slaves shaking hands with the grandsons of

the masters after the debate. Because of this the movie could be looked at as losing its

credibility entirely, even though people from the actual story were talked to during the making of

the movie.

A lot of the critics also talk about one point that is completely down played during the

movie. The effect of the great depression on everyone in the 1930s. The great depression sent
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millions of people into starvation. Between 30-60 percent more blacks were unemployed than

whites during this time. A scholar who has studied this era named Harvard Sitkoff in A New

Deal for Blacks once said that A specter of starvation haunted black America. Also during

this time, Texas was home of the third most lynchings in the united states, after Mississippi and

Georgia with 468.

However, when blacks of 2007 watch this film, the majority did not think about the great

depression or the amount of lynchings during the great depression era. During the time when

this movie was released former President Barak Obama, the first black president in the United

States, was about to run for his first term as president. It was a time where black people in

America felt that the road to total equality was finally ending. Regardless of the improvements

we had made by that time, we were still not treated equally. Many people say that even today,

after President Obamas second term of presidency, that we are still not treated equally. The

African American community received this movie as a beacon of change. A showing that there

would soon be change within the racial problems of the United States of America. The movie

the Great Debaters came at a time where blacks felt like they were in the home stretch of

racism, and they grasped onto the movie like a stadium seat during the 9th inning of baseball

game with the bases loaded.

The black community today is back to feeling hopeless when it comes to the race

problem in America. Unfortunately, we are nowhere near as far on resolving this problem as we

would like to be but the movie is still a visual of change even in 2017. The movie will always

timelessly tell minorities that in order for things to change, you have to make it change.
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Works Cited

Hodges, Amanda L. A Critical Close-Up: Three Films and Their Lessons in Critical Literacy.

The English Journal, vol. 99, no. 3, 2010, pp. 7075., www.jstor.org/stable/40503486.

Halyard, Helen. "World Socialist Web Site." The Great Debaters: An Enlightened Struggle

against Racial Oppression during the Depression. The International Committee of the Fourth

International (ICFI), 13 Feb. 2008. Web. 07 Apr. 2017.

Markin, Peter Paul. "*"The Great Debaters"- A Critical Analysis Of The Movie And More- A

Guest Commentary." American Left History. Blogspot.com, 14 Feb. 2010. Web. 07 Apr. 2017.

The Great Debaters. Directed by Denzel Washington, performances by Denzel Washington,

Jurnee Smollett-Bell, Nate Parker, Denzel Whitaker, and Forest Whitaker, Harpo Productions,

2007.