The Great Debaters

We saw another feel good movie last night; The Great Debaters. I'm a sucker for true stories with inspirational endings (gee, could this be what attracted me to the Barbaro saga?) and this one is right up there. Denzel Washington is the faculty advisor/coach of a debate team in the 1930s at an all black college in Marshall Texas. Needless to say the team takes on great obstacles and conquers all, proving that words can be great weapons.

A couple of interesting sidelights; our local news ran an interview with the woman who was on the team. She is 96 years old, remembers everything, and is, I believe, the only surviving member of the original team. Second, we in the Northeast of a certain age, did not experience the Jim Crow South in its hey day and this movie spares no punches. There is a lynching and a raid on a meeting of share croppers rumored to be organizing into a union. There is the requisite white sheriff and a brief appearance by the Texas rangers. It is not pretty; in fact it is very frightening.

The movie depicts the quiet presence of the intellectual African American tradition (whites, by the way, are referred to as "Anglo-Saxons"), that ultimately spawned the Civil Rights movement, led by one of the great orators of our time, Martin Luther King, Jr.

The power of words--a powerful message, especially in a time when it seems, like it must have then, that no one is listening.