Wednesday, February 4, 2009

What's New with the Real Great Debaters Documentary

Bay Area Colleges and Universitities Clamor to Know the True Story
Eleanor Boswell-Raine

For the past three months I have been exposing students, academicians and community to the true history of the Great Debaters from Wiley College - the debaters who were not composite characters, rather the ones who lived and accomplished equally remarkable feats as seen in the Hollywood version featuring director Denzell Washington.

As the daughter of a "great debater" who debated from 1935 - 1938 along with his roomate James Farmer and his classmates Hobbart jarrett, Henry Heights, I have a special passion to see that the truth of the experience is as well known as the silver screen version. It is important to all Americans to know about a black college team in Texas who reigned for alomost 20 years as one of the finest forensic teams in the nation. To that end I am starting to get the word out here in the bay area where I live.

The film deserves to be seen by young people, because it carries with it a message of hope and overcoming obstacles. It speaks to the tenacity of a teacher who influenced his students to devote their lives to changing Jim Crowism, leading civil rights movements and speaking truth to power in an effort to make America make good on her promise that all of its citizens are equal under the law with rights support those laws.

So far I have scheduled the following public screenings - Times and addresses will be posted this week:
  • February 26 - San Francisco State College
  • March 26 - Contra Costa Community College

I am working with Peralta College School District and University of California in an effort to schedule public screenings as well. I would like to introduce the film in community settings as well. I will keep you posted as things continue to develop.

The Great Debaters
Film Review by Kam Williams

Inspirational Bio-Bic Beset by Baffling Historical Inaccuracies

When a movie bills itself as “Inspired by a True Story,” to what extent should it be allowed to take liberties with the truth to spin a heartwarming tale which tugs on the heartstrings? That is the question which begs to be answered in the course of appraising The Great Debaters, an inspirational bio-pic about a professor who, in 1935, allegedly forged the fledgling debate team at a tiny black college into a nationally-ranked powerhouse that took on Harvard University in a big showdown aired on radio live all across the country.
The film’s most glaring, factual faux pas is that while Wiley College did, in fact, participate in the championships finals that year, its opponent was not Harvard at all, but USC. This fabrication naturally makes one wonder about other aspects of this recreation. Was the original contest really broadcast live on radio? (Unlikely) Was it even the first time, as implied, that a black college competed against a white school in the debate tournament? (No) Etcetera… etcetera…
Furthermore, the picture propagated plenty of other tall tales. For instance, there’s a scene where Professor Tolson (Denzel Washington) attempts instill some self respect in his pupils by quoting from Willie Lynch’s 1712 speech supposedly delivered to fellow slave owners about how to mold and control the minds of their slaves.
Well, the problem is that the infamous lecture never took place, and has long been dismissed by academics and experts, some African-American, as an urban legend which first surfaced circa 1993. There isn’t any reference to the speech in any literature prior to then. So, how could a professor have lectured about it way back when? Since I’ve criticized references made to Willie Lynch by other flicks, it would be hypocritical for me to give The Great Debaters a pass just because it’s such a well-meaning message movie.
There are considerable additional conceptual obstacles in the way of enjoying this consciousness-raising costume drama. For instance, whenever the Wiley team debates, it invariably is conveniently assigned to argue the politically-correct side of the issue, whether that be about welfare, lynching, integration, child labor, civil disobedience or elsewhat. Isn’t the mark of a skilled debater the ability to make a convincing case for either side, especially unpopular causes you don’t believe in?
All of the above fibs and fabrications aside, there is still much to recommend here. Denzel certainly delivers as the film’s plucky protagonist, as does Forest Whitaker in his co-star capacity as his less-confrontational colleague, James Farmer, Sr. Gina Rivera and Kimberly Elise capably play their wives, respectively, in support roles which aren’t all that demanding.
The cast is rounded out by the quartet of gifted young actors who comprise the Wiley debate team. Only one of these four characters, lovesick 14 year-old James Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), is based on a real person. The precocious Farmer would later found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and go on to become a leader of the Civil Rights Movement.
So, the other three debaters, feisty Samantha Booke (Jurnee Smollett), her womanizing boyfriend Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), and hefty Hamilton Burgess (Jermaine Williams) are fictional. This makes the closing credits a tad misleading, since it relates Tolson’s and Farmers’ subsequent actual exploits along with alleged later achievements of the others, even though they never existed.
One can only conclude that this movie was designed for youngsters, not adults. If that’s the case, do we want impressionable young minds understanding of history to be misshaped in this fashion? Well-Intentioned and well-executed, and recommended with reservations only because there’s still something terribly troubling even about a feelgood flick packed with so many misrepresentations.
Does the truth matter, or is reality retroactively up for grabs? Let the debating begin.

Good (2 stars)
Rated PG-13 for profanity, ethnic slurs, mature themes, brief sexuality, violence and disturbing images.
Running time: 123 minutes
Studio: MGM=

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Real Great Debaters Comes to Bay Area

The Real Great Debaters comes to Northern California audiences.

Inspired by the critically acclaimed Hollywood film The Great Debaters,The Real Great Debaters documentary delves deeper into the real-life events and tells the personal stories of the Wiley College Debaters of the 1920’s and ‘30’s.

The Bay Area’s Dr. Hamilton T. Boswell was one of Wiley’s Great Debaters who went on to achieve great strides during America’s civil rights era along with the well known C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality) legendary James Farmer. The film demonstrates how debate coach Dr. Melvin Tolson’s students, skilled in the power of speech would take up the cause of social and political progress to become major figures in the civil rights movement within their communities and make vast contributions to American society.

The Hamilton T. Boswell Foundation and AMS Productions is carrying the story of these debaters to churches, schools, colleges, cultural venues and other audiences interested in the lives of black students who stood up and won against the most prestigious debating teams of the era in America.

Please contact Eleanor Boswell-Raine to schedule a screening of this important movie made available to audiences by the Hamilton T. Boswell Foundation. Please email Eleanor@htboswellfoundation.com or call 510-384-4506.

Great Debaters - Why Wasn't History Good Enough

The Great Debaters: Why wasn’t history good enough?

Commentary by Eleanor Boswell-Raine,
Associate Publisher, the Globe Newspapers

The rewriting of black history in America is a touchy subject for those of us who know our history. Our true history is unknown to most Americans and lost to our black youth.

I am the daughter of Dr. Hamilton Boswell who was a member of the Wiley College debating team, the subject of the film The Great Debaters. Not unlike debater James Leonard Farmer, the founder of C.O.R.E. (Congress of Racial Equality), and Boswell’s roommate and fellow debater, Boswell’s Wiley experience inspired the direction of his life’s work. He credited his debating team coach, Professor Melvin Tolson and Wiley president Dogan as the men who changed the direction of his life and who gave him the courage to become a leading force for change in the San Francisco Bay Area during the height of the civil rights era.

Boswell along with other prominent San Francisco black leaders— doctors Carlton Goodlette and Dan Collins; attorneys Terry Francois, Roy Cannon and Joe Williams; Judge Joseph Kennedy; HUD’s Floyd Pierce; ILWU leader Bill Chester; and other men, from the cloth to the loading docks — changed the tide of discrimination of blacks in the workplace, housing, government and education.

Like Tolson, Boswell mentored young men, one of whom became the speaker of the Assembly and the mayor of San Francisco. He took his congregation beyond the walls of the church and into the streets, preaching the social gospel and building the first government-funded senior housing in the city as part of his legacy. After retirement, he served as the chaplain of the state Legislature for 10 years.

Through the years, I’ve heard people say that early American historians distorted the history of blacks. It was a tactic that contributed to the undermining of the accomplishments of blacks; it haunts us to this day.

In an interview with film critic Kam Williams after the opening of the film, Denzel Washington, when asked why he wanted to bring the story of the Great Debaters to the silver screen, said: “It’s history, that’s why I wanted to capture it. I said, ‘We can’t miss this.’ There’s a lot there, and we need to pass that on. These things need to be shared and celebrated.”

While the film The Great Debaters, produced by Oprah Winfrey’s HARPO production company and actor/director Denzel Washington, successfully projects episodes of cruelty and blatant hatred against blacks by the white South of 1935, it holds up a shining example of a tiny black Texas college that produced one of the finest college debating teams of the time.

So the question is: Why did its writers distort the Wiley College debating team’s history?

Here is what is true:

Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas, is a real black college. Melvin Tolson was a brilliant professor who coached an outstanding debating team that competed and won against other black and white colleges. James Farmer, a famous civil rights activist, was a junior member of the Wiley debating team. The year was 1935. Whites were lynching black people in the South. Fathers and mothers were humiliated in front of their children. While on the road, Tolson and his debaters were traveling in a car when they encountered a crowd of white men, women and children who had lynched and mutilated a black man. The Wiley debate team did compete and win a championship against a highly rated and revered university who held the national college championship. Professor Tolson did have leftist leanings, and debater’s parents were concerned about how it would affect their children’s future. These are among the real facts.

Here is what is untrue:

Perhaps one of the most damning distortions was the fictitious venue. The famous Wiley championship debate was NOT against Harvard, it was against the University of Southern California. While the debating teams whipped just about every black college throughout the South and went up against several white colleges, including the international Oxford team, Harvard was never the venue. The team traveled west, not north, to debate and win the national championship.

Three of the four debaters were fictional. The film’s writers took half of the names of authentic debaters and changed their last names. Hamilton Boswell became “Hamilton Burgess,” complete with the use of Boswell’s nickname, “Ham.” Henry Heights became “Henry Lowe.” There was no woman on the team in 1935. Most notably was the exclusion of Hobart Jarrett who along with Henry Heights won the USC debate in 1935.

In his 90s, Boswell shared with the researchers of the film his memories of the times, of Tolson and Wiley and of his personal experiences on the road with the debating team. Boswell died in May 2007 thinking that the Wiley debating team’s story would be told, and without knowledge that his name would be fictionalized.

The film sprinkled in facts that he provided. The most dramatic was the lynching scene that he, Tolson and Farmer witnessed. Boswell’s testimony about the event was carried by The New York Times online edition as an mp3 (to listen to the recording, visit www.theglobenewspapers.com). His voice boomed out as he discussed the impact on the group of witnessing the horrible lynching.

Was it lack of information that created fictitious people, quoting Willie Lynch, who by the way was unknown to them, a mere confusion of facts and historic context, or was it creative license taken to the extreme that caused a black producer and a black director and actor to recreate a profoundly notable moment in a small black college’s history?

Was it necessary to attribute real-life people’s accomplishments to fictitious characters at the end of the movie?

It was Hamilton Boswell, a real living person, who went to USC and became an important minister, not Hamilton Burgess. Was Hamilton Boswell not worthy of this recognition in his own right? Why tamper with the legacy of men who overachieved against all odds?

If Denzel Washington’s writers wanted to write about a fictitious team, why include a person like Tolson, who was not a fake, and distort him? Why use Farmer’s name? Why take a small black college’s history and moment of triumph only to fake it up? Why insult real debaters by faking their last names when one of them contributed to some of the authenticity of the film and was not even mentioned in a credit by his real name?

When will we treasure the accomplishments black American history instead of trying to improve on it? Once more we are saying to black people, “Your history is just not good enough!”
Documentary Relates True Story of the Great Debaters
By Kam Williams

A year ago, Denzel Washington directed and co-starred in The Great Debaters, a compelling, if fanciful docudrama which recounted how a debate team from an unheralded, Southern black college had traveled in 1935 from Texas to Cambridge, Massachusetts to defeat Harvard and win the national championship in a competition aired live, coast to coast, on national radio. Unfortunately, because Hollywood had taken considerable liberties with the truth in bringing the tale to the big screen, many of the events were either sensationalized or fabricated entirely, and the ensuing controversy resulted in a desire of many to separate fact from fiction.
As it turns out, the truth proves to be just as riveting to anyone interested in this critical chapter of African-American history. For tiny Wiley College, led by its intrepid and dedicated coach, Professor Melvin B. Tolson, did in fact defeat the reigning champion, but that all-white team was not from Harvard, but USC. Also, the film had combined and/or conflated the members of the original debate team into simplistically-drawn archetypes ostensibly in the interest of fashioning readily-recognizable characters for an easily-digested inspirational yarn with mass appeal.
Now, however, thanks to director Brad Osborne, we have The Real Great Debaters, a fascinating documentary which doesn’t merely correct the record, but amplifies that priceless legacy by sharing a cornucopia of rich details about Tolson and his talented young protégés, Hobart Jarrett, Hamilton Boswell, Rudolph Henry Heights, James Farmer, Jr., and Henrietta B. Wells. Archival footage, newspaper accounts and the wistful recollections of friends, family and luminaries combine to paint a rich picture of the complete lives of Tolson and his team and how they managed to beat the odds en route to their amazing accomplishment.
An overdue, posthumous tribute to some African-American role models worthy of emulation.

Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 74 minutes
Studio: AMS Pictures
DVD Extras: Extended interviews, rare historical film footage, “Behind the Scenes” featurette, “Life at Wiley College” documentary, and much more.