• Denzel Washington to portray Melvin B. Tolson By James S. Tyree Transcript Staff Writer Retired University of Oklahoma professor Melvin Tolson Jr. is an unassuming scholar, one who bristles at the idea of receiving attention. Shift the focus on his dad, though, and it’s a different story. He considers Melvin B. Tolson a fascinating person with a compelling story and, apparently, Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington agrees. Washington reportedly will be behind the camera this time to direct “The Great Debaters,” a movie about the elder Tolson’s Wiley College debate team. April 1, 1935, the team from Wiley, a black college in Marshall, Texas, upended the debate arena by beating the defending national champion University of Southern California. Tolson noted the project’s recent mention in a national magazine. “I was surprised it was in there, but I was not surprised by the news because I first heard about it last year,” Tolson, 82, said before picking up a newspaper section from last year. The Sept. 10, 2004, edition of the Marshall News-Messenger had an article on the future movie, with a photo of Washington scouting the area. “He came to visit Wiley College,” Tolson Jr. said of Washington, “and this is a picture of him visiting Wiley College.” Melvin B. Tolson later won greater acclaim as a poet who wrote “Libretto for the Republic of Liberia” in 1953, “The Harlem Gallery” in 1965 and other works, which is why his eldest son was surprised by the movie’s subject. “I don’t know how the idea came to Washington and the others to make a movie, who broached it or what, because my father has, since the 1930s, been known as a poet rather than anything else.” Melvin B. Tolson, a noted orator who also went on to teach at Langston and the Tuskegee Institute, died in 1966 at age 68. Years after Tolson led Wiley to victory over USC and other top universities, the younger Tolson made his own significant racial inroads in Oklahoma. In 1961, Tolson Jr. became the first black faculty member at OU. He continued teaching French at the university until his retirement in 1992. And back in 1950, he was the first African American to receive a degree from what is now Oklahoma State University. “There were two of us in that class,” he said of blacks at Oklahoma A&M; receiving master’s degrees before letting out a chuckle. “I’ll put it this way — I was the first to cross the stage.” Tolson earned his bachelor’s degree at Wiley while his father still taught there. He remembers the many nights when he was a kid and debate team members visited his home to practice and hone their skills. Family members also sharpened their debating skills at the house. Tolson said his father was a major influence on his life, even though he never pushed any of his four children into any particular field. “I know intellectually as far as ideas and philosophy are concerned I learned a great deal from him, but it was by the way, because he was there,” Tolson said. “I had a father who always was there for meals and he loved to talk, so we talked. … The table was just a whirlwind of conversation and opinions and ideas and things like that, and you learned to defend them.” Young Tolson couldn’t wait to grow up, enroll at Wiley and join its debate team. But when he arrived at Wiley in the early 1940s, at the eve of the United States entering World War II, debate was beginning its decline in popularity. It was quite a ride, though, for Wiley College. An excerpt from the 1936 edition of Wiley’s yearbook “The Kitten” described the debate team “beating most of the Negro colleges and several outstanding white universities. Lost only one decision debate out of 75. Completion of the tentative date with Oxford in England is 1937.” The team included future leaders like Hobart Jarrett, who later headed the English Department at Langston and was instrumental in bringing the elder Tolson to Langston in 1947, and social activist James Farmer. The team was great, and no one realized it more than its coach. Author Joy Flasch wrote of an example right before the big USC match in her biography, “Melvin B. Tolson”: “When his team wanted to visit the campus, Tolson told his students, “Oh, they’re not so much. We’ll visit them after we win the debate just to show them we’re good sports.” Flasch went on to write, “When Mae West heard about the amazing record of the little Texas team, she asked to meet it, and for years Tolson proudly displayed the autographed picture she gave him.” Intellectual talent and titles, though, did not shield the team from the overt and sometimes violent racism of the time and region. Robert Farnsworth, in his book “Melvin B. Tolson, 1898-1966: Plain Talk and Prophetic Prophecy,” quoted Jarrett’s written account of the team’s travels through the South: “Onward, Mississippi! The debaters of Wiley College en route to an eastern university, stop their steaming car at a general store to get some water. A half-intoxicated upholder of Nordic superiority shoots at them twice with a Winchester.” Jarrett also wrote of a 3 a.m. encounter in Arkansas, where a mob with torches looked for an African American tramp who supposedly killed a deputy as he stepped into a boxcar. “The Wiley debaters are on the road and the road leads through the tremendous circle of mobsters,” Jarrett wrote, adding that Tolson told a biracial team member while darker members ducked down. “The night is friendly, protecting.” Jarrett continued. “The mulatto salutes nonchalantly the grim-faced members of the mob, allaying their suspicions. And the debaters reach Memphis and read about the mob in the morning newspapers.” James S. Tyree 366-3539 jtyree@normantranscript.com