Movie: "The Great Debater"

[PerroLoco]

The upcoming movie 'The Great Debaters', which is in> post-production now, stars Denzel Washington as> Melvin B. Tolson, who led the historically black> Wiley College Debate Team to challenge the Harvard> Debate Team for the national championship. Prof.> Tolson is a member of Omega Psi Phi, a member of> Beta Chapter (Lincoln Univ. PA) when Langston Hughes> was there in the '20s. He was the managing editor of> The Oracle, the fraternity's organ in the late '30s> and was a graduate scholarship winner also. Tolson,> a modernist poet, later became the Poet Laureate of> Liberia.> >http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809870043/video/4873440/>

[mccoyred]

This is going to be really good. I love seeing movies, esp about us, that depict the years between emancipation and the blaxpoitation era.






Of course, it doesn't hurt that my 'other husband' is in it.

[DivineDiva47]

Originally Posted by mccoyred

This is going to be really good. I love seeing movies, esp about us, that depict the years between emancipation and the blaxpoitation era.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that my 'other husband' is in it.

I just saw this movie on opening day and it was AWESOME! I don't want to give anything away but take your kids to see this movie it will inspire them!!

[jitterbug13]

Cosign with Soror Divine Diva. I caught a sneak preview last weekend and really enjoyed the movie.

[eduakator]

Took the family to watch this movie yesterday. I cried at the end of the debate. It was an inspiring movie and lead to needed conversation with my two teenagers about racial conditions in the USA. I am truly proud to know that Mr. Tolson was a member of the Greek family.

[knight_shadow]

I saw this movie on Christmas day and enjoyed it as well. It's always refreshing to see movies as inspiring as this, particularly with AA leading roles. And like someone said earlier, it is definately a movie that can be a catalyst for conversation with younger folks who may not keep up with history.

[FeeFee]

I want to take my daughter to see this movie on New Year's Day. My Linesister worked on the movie as well.

[Phrozen1ne]

That was an excellent movie!

THE GREAT DEBATERS. Inspired by a true story, THE GREAT DEBATERS chronicles the journey of Professor Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington), a brilliant but volatile debate team coach who uses the power of words to shape a group of underdog students from a small African American college in the deep south into a historically elite debate team. A controversial figure, Professor Tolson challenged the social mores of the time and was under constant fire for his unconventional and ferocious teaching methods as well as his radical political views.

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Omega Psi Phi) Professor Melvin B. Tolson (center) led the Wiley College debate team to a U.S. championship in 1935 with a win over Harvard University. (Photos courtesy of Wiley College.)
The most memorable Wiley College debate was not with Oxford (or Harvard) It was with the 1935 national champions, the Southern California Trojans. By the time the school year began in 1934, Tolson was at the top of his game as debate coach. Making his second goodwill tour, Tolson and his team of Farmer, Jarrett and Heights scheduled a sojourn through the Southwest. Included on their extended schedule were The University of New Mexico at El Paso, the University of California at Oakland and San Francisco State Teachers College, 5,000 miles in all. The big occasion came the night of April 2, 1935 before an audience of 2,200 at Southern California's Bovard Auditorium. The night before the debate Tolson would not let his team leave the dorm rooms where they were housed, according to Farmer. He was afraid the team would be intimidated because the speech department of the University of Southern California was bigger than the whole of Wiley College. He need not have been concerned.



Both teams, dressed in tuxedos, took the stage, with Wiley on the affirmative side. The Pi Kappa Delta-sponsored question for 1934-1935 was the one concerning the prevention of international shipment of munitions, which was probably the subject of the Southern California encounter. "From the time Floyd C. Covington, who presided, opened the program until its close the vast audience was held in rapt attention by the scholarly presentations of both teams," described Tolson. Farmer, a freshman at the time, was an alternate and observer. His memory of the team and that night was remarkable.


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(Alpha Phi Alpha) Hobart Jarrett, the intellectual junior from Tulsa, Okla., was described by Farmer as "a polished, dignified, cultivated young man wearing rimless glasses." Height's college career had its ups and downs "He kept getting expelled for drinking," said Farmer, of Tolson's most charismatic debater. "When Heights stood up to give his rebuttal he would say, 'When I was a boy in Wichita Falls, Texas, I noticed something about those jackrabbits. The jack rabbit never runs in a straight line; he jumps from one side to another' - and then he gave a little hop. Then he turned round slowly and looked at his opponent, and the audience roared.'" Using what became known as "the mighty Tolson method," the Wileyites were victorious. Tolson spent a lot of time training his debaters in the tactics and strategy of arguments. "He drilled us on every gesture, every pause," Jarrett wrote in an article for the May 1935 issue of the NAACP magazine The Crisis. "Our debate squad reads hundreds of magazine articles and scores of books on government, economics, sociology, history and literature. We are taught to be prepared for anything."





One of the young men on the debate team was Civil rights leader, author, labor organizer, and teacher, (Omega Psi Phi) James Leonard Farmer, Jr. who was born on January 12, 1920, in Marshall, Texas. He earned degrees from Wiley College (1938) and the Howard University School of Divinity (1940). Farmer went on to found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) which played a key role in the Civil Rights movement, particularly in launching the Freedom Rides in the summer of 1961. These bus rides tested the federal interstate transportation accomodations at bus terminals. Combined with other CORE non-violent acts, the Freedom Rides led in part to the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Bill of 1964, and to the Civil Rights Voting Act the following year. Farmer is widely recognized as one of the Civil Rights movement's "Big Four," along with Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, and Whitney Young of the National Urban League.


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In 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded Farmer the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Farmer died on July 9, 1999

[5Knowledge1913]

Originally Posted by eduakator

Took the family to watch this movie yesterday. I cried at the end of the debate. It was an inspiring movie and lead to needed conversation with my two teenagers about racial conditions in the USA. I am truly proud to know that Mr. Tolson was a member of the Greek family.

I saw the film this evening and cried too! It is a beautiful film!

[YAHSHUA's son]

That movie was nice and it shows the communist connection to the black community........history is something else ...it is so wild how ...History classes in America leave this stuff out but the truth about what was going on during the time period of this movie are laid out in books movies and websites......was W E B Dubois wrong was Langston Hughs wrong...."Good bye Christ" art did not spring out of nowhere ........

Du Bois' Application for Membership in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA)
Du Bois applied for membership in the CPUSA in 1961. That same year he left for Ghana with his second wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois. The letter was released at a press conference organized by James and Esther Jackson, who were friends and comrades of Du Bois. The letter appeared in the Worker on Nov. 26, 1961.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On the first day of October, 1961, I am applying for admission to membership in the Communist Party of the United States. I have been long and slow in coming to this conclusion, but at last my mind is settled.

In college I heard the name Karl Marx, but read none of his works, nor heard them explained. At the University of Berlin, I heard much of those thinkers who had definitively answered the theories of Marx, but again, we did not study what Marx himself had said. Nevertheless, I attended the meetings of the Socialist Party and considered myself a Socialist.

On my return to America, I taught and studied for sixteen years. I explored the theory of Socialism and studied the organized social life of American Negroes; but still I neither read or heard much of Marxism. Then I came to New York as a official of the new NAACP and editor of the Crisis Magazine. The NAACP was capitalist oriented and expected support from rich philanthropists.

But it had a strong Socialist element in its leadership in persons like Mary Ovington, William English Walling and Charles Edward Russell. Following their advice, I joined the Socialist Party in 1911. I knew then nothing of practical socialist politics and in the campaign of 1912, I found myself unwilling to vote the Socialist ticket, but advised Negroes to vote for Wilson. This was contrary to Socialist Party rules and consequently I resigned from the Socialist Party.

For the next twenty years I tried to develop a political way of life for myself and my people. I attacked the Democrats and Republicans for monopoly and disenfranchisement of Negroes; I attacked the Socialists for trying to segregate Southern Negro members; I praised the racial attitudes of the Communists, but opposed their tactics in the case of the Scottsboro boys and their advocacy of a Negro state. At the same time I began to study Karl Marx and the Communists; I read Das Kapital and other Communist literature; I hailed the Russian Revolution of 1917, but was puzzled at the contradictory news from Russia.

Finally in 1926, I began a new effort; I visited Communist lands. I went to the Soviet Union in 1926, 1936, 1949, and 1959; I saw the nation develop. I visited East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. I spent ten weeks in China, traveling all over the land. Then this summer, I rested a month in Romania.

I was early convinced that Socialism was an excellent way of life, but I thought it might be reached by various methods. For Russia, I was convinced she had chosen the only path open to her at the time. I saw Scandinavia choosing a different method, half-way between Socialism and Capitalism. In the United States I saw Consumers Cooperation as a path from Capitalism to Socialism, while England, France, and Germany developed in the same direction in their own way. After the depression and the Second World War, I was disillusioned. The Progressive movement in the United States failed. The Cold War started. Capitalism called Communism a crime.

Today I have reached a firm conclusion:

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

Communism--the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute--it has and will make mistakes, but today it marches triumphantly on in education and science, in home and food, with increased freedom of thought and deliverance from dogma. In the end Communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day.

The path of the American Communist Party is clear: It will provide the United States with a real Third Party and thus restore democracy to this land. It will call for:

1. Public ownership of natural resources and of all capital.
2. Public control of transportation and communications.
3. Abolition of poverty and limitation of personal income.
4. No exploitation of labor.
5. Social medicine, with hospitalization and care of the old.
6. Free education for all.
7. Training for jobs and jobs for all.
8. Discipline for growth and reform.
9. Freedom under law.
10. No dogmatic religion.

www.tcnj.edu/~fisherc/black_and_red.html
These aims are not crimes. They are practiced increasingly over the world. No nation can call itself free which does not allow its citizens to work for these ends.