The Great Debaters

The Great Debaters is a 2007 American biopic period drama film directed by and starring Denzel Washington and produced by Oprah Winfrey and her production company, Harpo Productions. It is based on an article written about the Wiley College debate team by Tony Scherman for the 1997 Spring issue of American Legacy.

Based on a true story, the plot revolves around the efforts of debate coach Melvin B. Tolson Denzel 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. In the movie, the Wiley team eventually succeeds to the point where they are able to debate Harvard University. This was their 47th annual debate team.The movie also explores the social constructs in Texas during the Great Depression including not only the daytoday insults and slights African Americans endured, but also a lynching. Also depicted is James L. Farmer, Jr. Denzel Whitaker, who, atyears old, was on Wileys debate team after completing high school and who later went on to cofound C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality. According to the Houston Chronicle, 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 minor African American poet whose papers are housed at the Library of Congress. ........

Source: Wikipedia