Exclusive: The Great Debaters

"Debate is Combat but your weapons are Words"
- Actor and Director Denzel Washington


Dear all,

Each year World Universities Debating Championship brings us the oratory bonding with our debating fraternities from Across the world. This time WUDC is going to see the massive gathering with 400 worlds top debating teams and 400 adjudicators. Thanks to AU and the organizing Team of AU; TJ, Tarique, Ravi and other members of WUDC 2008 organizing Team for moving toward a Perfect Asian Version of Worlds. We all hope People will enjoy the championship with high standered debating involvement.

My thanks to the AU Team and the WUDC Council Members for holding the Standers for The Greatest Debating Show on Earth. from last few moths few of you must followed the latest updates of the Debating Movie "The Great Debaters" from World Debating Website, Global Debate and from the IDEA wiki. So i have decided to write this story for You all who are going to WUDC 2008 and for My friends Who are working 24/7 from AU organizing Team to make sure our comfort.

Ladies and Gentlemen Before WUDC 2008, The Hollywood will present you debating movie based on the True Story and which is also created a huge expectation for its debating involvement "The Great Debaters".


Regards,
Rashedul Hasan Stalin


Asian Debating Website Exclusive

By: Rashedul Hasan Stalin


This time of year, movie studios release their most prestigious films of the year in hopes of snagging Academy Award nominations. While it’s still too soon to call how African Americans will fair come Oscar time, the holiday season in US has brought black audiences much to choose from with movie such The Great Debaters. This year World Universities Debating Championship 2008 Circuit will have something to talk about except debating but a Debating Movie.

The Movie: The Great Debaters

The Great Debaters is based on the true story of Melvin B. Tolson, a professor at Wiley College Texas-USA who inspired his students to form the school's first debate team. Professor Melvin Tolson, a brilliant debate team coach, uses the power of words to shape a group of underdog students from a small African American college in the deep south into a historically elite debate team. A controversial figure, Professor Tolson challenged the social mores of the time and was under constant fire for his unconventional and debating teaching methods as well as his political views. In their pursuit for excellence, Tolson''s debate team receives a groundbreaking invitation to debate Harvard University ''s Debating Championship.
It tells the story of an award-winning team of debaters from Wiley College, a small, historically black institution founded in 1873 and located in Marshall, Texas.

In the 1930s the debate team, surpassed nearly every other team in the US in contests against universities as far-flung as the University of Southern California and Oxford. Nonetheless, the Wiley team was never officially accorded championship status because the national debate society of that day did not formally recognize black participation. Though unrewarded then, many of the graduates of Wiley's debate team went on to become the most eloquently influential movers in the civil rights movement, most notably James Farmer Jr., who founded the Congress of Racial Equality. He encouraged his students not only to be well-rounded people but also to stand up for their rights, a controversial position in the U.S. South of the early and mid-20th century.

Actor Denzel and his movie crew got to the hallowed ground because the Ivy League school doesn’t allow any commerical shooting of its campus. However, "The Great Debaters" did film the Great Debate inside Sanders Theatre’s Memorial Hall, one of the Crimson’s public facilities in Harvard University .

The film stars Denzel as Wiley’s debate team coordinator - and renowned poet - Melvin B. Tolson, and fellow Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker plays the college’s president. The movie’s script followed the real-life story to the letter, Tolson and his undefeated debate team, played by Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett and Denzel Whitaker,would have wound up filming at the University of Southern California, the true National Champions of 1935.

The Forgotten Black American Debate Coach

"Black Crispus At tucks taught / Us how to die / Before white Patrick Henry's bugle breath / Uttered the vertical / Transmitting cry: / 'Yea give me liberty or give me death.'" These words still reverberate in this sixty-sixth year of the celebration by African Ameri cans of "Black History Month." They express the importance that the struggle against socioeconomic and cultural racism held for Melvin B. Tolson in his lifetime and in the work he left to what he called "the vertical audience," that of the ages. This poet, orator, teacher of English and American literatures, gram marian, small-town mayor, theater founder and director and a great debate coach was born on 6 February 1898 in Moberly, Missouri, the son and nephew of Methodist preachers. The family moved frequently in Missouri and Iowa to the different churches his studiously intellectual but autodidact father pastored.

Melvin Beaunorus Tolson was an American Modernist poet, educator, columnist, and politician. His work concentrated on the experience of African Americans and includes several poetic histories. He was a contemporary of the Harlem Renaissance and, although he was not a participant in it, his work reflects its influences.Since his father was an itinerant Methodist minister, Tolson lived in several towns before graduating from high school in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1918. After spending his freshman year at Fisk University, he attended Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania, from 1920 until graduation in 1923.

In 1924, with an appointment in English and speech, Tolson started his teaching career at Wiley College, Marshall, Texas, where he stayed for the next twenty-three years. He showed an early interest in poetry, drama, and debate. He was only fourteen when his first poem was printed, and during the Wiley years the debate teams he coached earned considerable renown, while one unpublished play after another was locally staged. By the time Tolson left Texas in 1947, he had reportedly also been active in organizing farm laborers and sharecroppers. His next position was that of professor of English and drama at Langston University in Oklahoma, where he taught until his retirement in 1964.

In 1947, in connection with the centennial of his country, Liberian president William V. S. Tubman made Tolson poet laureate of Liberia, a gesture to which the poet responded with his Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), a work that prompted Allen Tate to write, "For the first time . . . a Negro poet has assimilated completely the full poetic language of his time and . . . the language of the Anglo-American poetic tradition." This long, learned poem stands in the tradition associated with T. S. Eliot. In his last book Tolson returns to the world of Harlem with The Curator (1965), the first part of a projected work, Harlem Gallery. On May 25, 1966, Tolson received the annual poetry award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in Dallas on August 29, 1966, and was buried in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

The last Word

Many of you will break to this year's Worlds, some of you will win the title because you have allowed to participate as a Debater and because of your qualities. But think of those who were intentionally disallowed during 1930's in US. Culture and the Color made all the difference between the social classes once. Now time has come to move with tolerance, gratitude and harmony.


May The Spirit of WUDC 2008 Wins ............ ......... ..


The Great Debaters Movie Detail:
Directed by Denzel Washington

Release date(s)
December 25, 2007 just before WUDC 2008

Original Movie Trailer will be found at
http://www.thegreat debatersmovie. com/

Produced by
Oprah Winfrey
Denzel Washington
Joe Roth
Kate Forte
David Crockett
Todd Black
Molly Allen

Written by
Suzan-Lori Parks

Starring
Denzel Washington
Forest Whitaker
Denzel Whitaker
Kimberly Elise
Jurnee Smollett
Gina Ravera

Distributed by
Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer

Web Source:
http://www.questia. com/
www.lib.subr. edu/
www.doollee. com/
www.britannica. com/
www.imdb.com/
www.rottentomatoes. com/