My family and I just returned from watching the latest Denzel Washington movie, The Great Debaters, which dramatizes the story of tiny, all-black Wiley College’s triumph over the Harvard University debate team in the 1930s. (It’s an Oprah Winfrey production, for those who are interested.) The premise probably doesn’t sound like a "must-see" these days, since there’s no promise of bloodshed and the PG-13 rating doesn’t offer much in the way of sexual escapes either, but go see it if you get a chance. According to the weekend’s movie rankings in terms of box office, not many of us are (even though the half-full auditorium gave it a spontaneous round of applause after our showing).
Today’s children, and perhaps too many of us adults, don’t really understand the importance of the civil rights movement and how not-so-long-ago just down the road from Dallas in Marshall (and surely in Dallas, too), black Americans didn’t have anywhere near the same opportunities whites did. The movie isn’t preachy, but there are a couple of moments when it drives a point home, and it’s all wrapped around a good story about some kids from nowhere who worked hard, beat the odds and made something of themselves — and that’s a story line that’s still inspiring regardless of the actors’ color.
