In the present, looking at the past, peering into the future

It was an interesting Sunday evening that consisted of Charla's world famous breakfast casserole for dinner, lively conversation, and "The Great Debaters."

We watched the movie as the evening light faded, a good thing because it allowed all of us to hide our emotions at the intense moments of the movie, and there were several. For me the first was when the young woman from Wiley College spoke passionately to the audience about integration, that the time "is always now," out in the middle of of the pasture with the church's tent shielding the listeners from the sun. The second one was the lynching scene. Too unspeakable to attempt to describe. The third was young Farmers' presentation in the hall on the Harvard Campus.

We laughed at lot because one of our number has numerous friends and acquaintances who were extras in the movie, and her college band played in the sound track of the movie.

For all of us, it was a riveting look back at Jim Crow, lynchings, racism, and people of immense courage. The prof who was a teacher and coach by day and an activist for the Southern Tenants Farmers Union by night, risking life and limb for a cause. The students who slowly grabbed hold of the idea that they could and should stand up, speak up, and shout out words of freedom and liberation before audiences large and small.

For me, it was a retrospective into the things I've been reading and studying, teaching, and writing about over the last few years.

For me also was the realization that three of the next generation of activists were sitting in our living room......

Now that stirs me deeply, more deeply than I have words to express.

"The Great Debaters"

It's a stirring movie based on a true story.

By day Melvin Tolson was an English professor and coach of the debate team at Wiley College, a small Black school in Marshall, Texas, during the mid-1930s. By night he was an activist for the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union. He lived in two worlds, and both were important.

As a debate coach he was demanding. As an activist he was purposeful and deliberate. The worlds were kept separate until the local sheriff's department sniffed him out as a threat to the local separate but unequal worlds of the times.

His students are edgy, smart, articulate, precocious, and vulnerable. The tenant farmers are defeated and afraid, yet they are determined to step out from beneath the heal of the boot of the plantation system known as tenant farming where the advantages were to the owners.

The story of his students will move you as they begin to grasp a vision for what they can do in the days of Jim Crow as they defeat one Black school after another to eventually face Harvard, the best of the best among prestigious White schools. You will see their internal strivings and relationships, and you will see them horrified (and you will be horrified yourself) at the sight of a lynching as they try to find their way to a campus for another debate. "What did he do wrong?" is a question that is asked. Eventually, the answer, "He did nothing wrong." They barely escape, and whatever naivete they lived with was now shattered.

You'll admire the work of Tolson's secret life and his public life. You'll be amazed at the great things his students go on to do with their lives.

You'll cry.

You'll feel like you're in that great hall in Cambridge the night of the great debate.

You'll want to stand up and applaud.

It's a great story of people, education, community, and facing the odds of the Jim Crow South.

It's a must see movie. Check this link out for more historical background to the movie.