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!”