The Great Debaters

Event information

The Great Debaters is a period drama film directed by and starring two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington and produced by Oprah Winfrey . Based on a true story, the plot revolves around the efforts of debate coach Melvin B. Tolson (Washington) at historically black Wiley College to place his team on equal footing with whites in the American South during the 1930s, when Jim Crow laws were common and lynch mobs were a pervasive fear for blacks.

The movie also explores Texas during the Great Depression the day-to-day insults African Americans endured and the importance of education,. Also depicted is James L. Farmer, Jr. (Whitaker), who, at 14 years old, was on Wiley's debate team after completing high school (and who later went on to co-found C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality). Another character depicted on the team, Samantha Booke, is based on the real individual Henrietta Bell Wells, the only female member of the 1930 debate team from Wiley College who participated in the first collegiate interracial debate in the United States. Wells also happened to be a African American poet whose papers are housed at the Library of Congress.

This is a fantastic, educational and inspiring film which never had a cinematic release in this country. This film is presented by Images of Black Women and Black History Walks
www.imagesofblackwomen.com
www.blackhistorywalks.co.uk