“The Great Debaters,” a Black college-based historical drama starring Denzel Washington, renders rousing justice to the legacy of Wiley College’s 1935 national championship debating team. With its focus on a debating team at a historically Black college achieving victories against teams from larger Black school rivals and White universities, the Oprah Winfrey-produced, Washington-directed film sets out on an ambitious course. And for the most part, it delivers.
Coached by a quirky and politically radical poet, Dr. Melvin B. Tolson, who is played by Washington, the debate team encounters numerous challenges, including the struggle for personal safety in the dangerous Jim Crow South of that era. In addition to Washington’s solid acting and directing, the film boasts Forest Whitaker, a recent Academy Award-winning actor like Washington, and Denzel Whitaker (no relation to Forest Whitaker), as the real-life father and son, Dr. James L. Farmer, Sr. and noted civil rights activist James L. Farmer Jr.
At the time, the elder Farmer, the first Black man from Texas to earn a Ph.D., was an administrator at Wiley College, located in Marshall, Texas. During his career, the elder won acclaim as an author and theologian. As one of Wiley’s best-known graduates, the younger Farmer emerged as a leading activist in the American civil rights movement in the 1940s and remained an influential movement figure through the 1960s. In the movie, the younger Farmer is portrayed as a precocious 14-year-old freshman debater whose relative youth leads to compelling conflicts with the older student debaters.
As the aspiring attorney Samantha Booke, Jurnee Smollett (co-star of “Eve’s Bayou”) turns in a fiery performance as the first woman to join the Wiley College team. Smollett shines as she summons barely controlled rage at racial injustice to energize her debating performances. Nate Parker as the brooding, rebellious Henry Lowe proves adept as the skeptical foil to Washington’s domineering Melvin. An older student who has attended college intermittently over the years, Parker’s Henry is a combination of bad boy charisma and vulnerability that makes him irresistible to the women he encounters, including Samantha.
