....the random, brutal humiliation of the everyday life of southern blacks
We hear people saying they will skip “The Great Debaters” because they are tired
of inspirational movies. While this one certainly falls into the template of the
inspired teacher showing his students the way up and out, there is much more to
this movie than that. My suggestion would be to set aside preconceived notions
and go see it.
It is 1935.
Denzel Washington plays Melvin Tolson, the articulate debate coach at Wiley
College in Marshall, Texas. He will use all his powers of example and persuasion
to give his students the weapons of words to fight their way out of the culture
they were born in. Based loosely on a true story, the movie takes the debate
team from its raw beginnings to a heralded debate at Harvard. So much, so
predictable.
Denzel
Washington, who directed and stars, fastens our eyes to the sight of a lynching
in progress, the victim hung from a tree and set afire to the delight of his
torturers below. And this one act is just the actual symbol of what we have been
feeling since the movie began: the random, brutal, humiliation of the every day
life of southern blacks at the hands of redneck southern whites who hold the
power of life and death.
Feel the
humiliation again when James Farmer Sr. (Forest Whitaker) is proudly driving his
family along a country road. Farmer, with a Ph.D from Boston University, is the
president of Wiley College. He accidentally hits a hog owned by a poor white
farmer, an ignorant ugly being who knows he has the power granted by his culture
to inflict shame on the Farmer family. The accomplished father can do nothing to
protect his family. James Farmer, his wife, and his children learn the lesson
well: there is no recourse.
There will
not be legal recourse until the unanimous decision in Brown vs. The Board of
Education grants it in 1954. Between the bookend dates of ’35 and ’54, the
culture of the Jim Crow south had its way. This movie gives us a searing
reminder of the indignities endured during those two decades. Watch young James
Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker, no relation) gain his real life education the hard
way while internalizing the tools his teacher gives him. He will grow up to
found CORE. while his peers find their various paths to the civil rights
movement after the Brown case hands them the legal basis for their actions.
If for no
other reason, go see this movie just for the scene between Forest Whitaker and
Denzel Washington when they clash in disagreement. They are superb and you will
not forget them. While the student debates are badly flawed, the incidents that
inflame the young debaters are mesmerizing. They still resonate today – and will
beyond the life spans of most of us. Denzel Washington and a fine cast have
flung us into the core symbols of our past that still haunt us.
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