Great Debaters

"We do what we have to do, to do what we want to do."

I really enjoyed watching this movie. The culture in this movie seemed most between white and black people. In the beginning the coach was trying to get his debate team to get to know each other, in the process he mentioned a bit of history. Walter Lynch created "lynching". Which was his way of teaching the whites how to keep their slaves in line. He taught them to keep their bodies strong but their minds weak. Eventually lynching turned into racism and murder just because whites felt they could, because they feel they were above and better than the blacks.

The debate team was a four member team of blacks. Their first debate was against Oklahoma City University about letting blacks and whites go to state universities together. They weren't even allowed on campus during this debate. It was never said why the debate wasnt on campus, but it could have been for a number of reasons. In my opinion I think it was because that it was a black debate team. I think they had their own negative thoughts about black people so they didnt want to "risk" having them at the university.

However, throughout the entire debate season Mr. Tolson tried to get Harvard to debate them. By the end of the movie Harvard finally sent them an invitation to debate them on campus. It seemed they did not care what race they were they only interested debating them. Which quite honestly was a pretty heated debate. But in the end Samantha Booke and James Farmer Jr. overtook Harvard.