Sure enough, a couple friends asked, "What's The Great Debaters?" It is, for my money, the purest feel-good movie since 2002's The Quiet American. If a film based on the exploits of a Communist professor who trained a championship debating team at a small Black college in Texas in the '30s while secretly organizing for the Southern Tenant Farmers Union doesn't sound appealing to you, maybe you should give it a miss. Otherwise, catch it while it's still in the theaters!
To pique your interest further, here is a poem about a higher stakes debate by the real Professor Melvin B. Tolson (played in the film by Denzel Washington), actually a section of his book-length poem Harlem Gallery, published the year before his death in 1966.
The Sea-Turtle and the Shark
by Melvin B. Tolson
Strange but true is the story
of the sea-turtle and the shark-
the instinctive drive of the weak to survive
in the oceanic dark.
Driven
riven by hunger
from abyss to shoal,
sometimes the shark swallows
the sea-turtle whole.
The sly reptilian marine
withdraws,
into the shell
of his undersea craft,
his leathery head and the rapacious claws
that can rip
a rhinoceros’ hide
or strip
a crocodile to fare-thee-well;
now,
inside the shark,
the sea-turtle begins the churning seesaws
of his descent into pelagic hell;
then . . . then,
with ravenous jaws
that can cut sheet steel scrap,
the sea-turtle gnaws
. . . and gnaws . . . and gnaws . . .
his way in a way that appalls-
his way to freedom,
beyond the vomiting dark,
beyond the stomach walls
of the shark.
Read more!
by Melvin B. Tolson
Strange but true is the story
of the sea-turtle and the shark-
the instinctive drive of the weak to survive
in the oceanic dark.
Driven
riven by hunger
from abyss to shoal,
sometimes the shark swallows
the sea-turtle whole.
The sly reptilian marine
withdraws,
into the shell
of his undersea craft,
his leathery head and the rapacious claws
that can rip
a rhinoceros’ hide
or strip
a crocodile to fare-thee-well;
now,
inside the shark,
the sea-turtle begins the churning seesaws
of his descent into pelagic hell;
then . . . then,
with ravenous jaws
that can cut sheet steel scrap,
the sea-turtle gnaws
. . . and gnaws . . . and gnaws . . .
his way in a way that appalls-
his way to freedom,
beyond the vomiting dark,
beyond the stomach walls
of the shark.
I was introduced to Harlem Gallery by my friend Chuck Colding in 1967, so when "The Sea Turtle and the Shark" played a small role in the emergence of the New Communist Movement in the U.S., I recognized it. FotM offers a cool historic prize to the first person to identify that role in the comments section here. Just click on the word "comments" directly below.
