The Great Debaters Page #8

it was horrible.

That's right. You did it horrible, didn't you?

Stuck-up the whole joint. Right?

So she just quit, right?

She just give up?

No.

Who is the judge?

What?

Who is the judge?

Judge is God.

And why is he God?

Because he decides who wins or

loses, not my opponent.

Who is your opponent?

He doesn't exist.

Why doesn't he exist?

Because he is a mute dissenting

voice of the truth I speak!

That's right. Speak the truth!

/Direct from Harvard, Memorial Hall

/in Cambridge Massachusetts,

/This is the WNBC Radio, bringing

/to you live tonight's history, making debate...

/Between little Wiley College,

/from Marshall Texas,

/And the Harvard University

/debate team.

/The first time ever a negro college

/has faced the national champions.

/Harvard's Dean and students are making

their ways to the podium now.

/The crowd as if were cued fall silent.

/On this historical occasion...

/We welcome the distinguished

/team from Wiley College,

/the illustrious judges, you, the audience,

/and through the wonder of radio, the nation.

Harvard University celebrates

its 300th anniversary this year.

And in Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

its 5th President of the US.

/But no University, no matter how

grand or august in its history

/Can't afford to live in the past,

/So in the spirit of tomorrow...

/I introduce to you today...

The debaters from Wiley College,

Miss Samantha Booke

Mr. James Farmer Junior.

What?

Mr. Farmer will argue

the first affirmative.

Resolved:

Civil disobedience is a moral weapon

in the fight for justice.

But how can disobedience ever be moral?

I guess that's depend on one's

definition of the words.

Word.

In 1919 in India, 10,000 people

gathered in Amritsar...

to protest the tyranny

of British rule.

Has it started?

Your brother's talking, just sit down.

/General Reginald Dyer,

/traped them in a courtyard,

And ordered his troops to fire

into the crowd for 10 minutes.

/Men, women, children,

/shot down in cold blood.

Dyer said he taught

them a moral lesson.

Ghandhi and his followers

responded not with violence,

But with organised campaign

of non-cooperation.

/Government buildings were occupied,

/Streets were blocked by people

/who refused to rise.

/Even being beaten by police.

Ghandhi was arrested.

But the British were

soon forced to release him.

He called it "a moral victory".

The definition of moral:

Dyer's lesson,

or Ghandi's victory?

You choose.

From 1914 to 1918,

For every single minute the world was at war.

Just think of it.

Were hurled into eternity

every hour of every day,

Of every night for 4 long years.

Here was a slaughter immeasurable

greater that what happened in Amritsar.

Can be anything moral about it?

Nothing.

Except that it stopped Germany

from enslaving all of Europe.

Civil disobedience isn't

moral because it's non-violent.

Fighting for your country

with violence can be deeply moral.

Demanding the greatest sacrifice of all.

Life itself.

Non-violence, is the mask

civil disobedience wears

to conceal it's true face.

Anarchy.

/Ghandhi believes one must always act

/With love and respect for ones opponents.

/Even if they are Harvard debaters.

/Ghandhi also believes that

law-breakers...

Must accept the legal consequences

for their actions.

Does it sound like anarchy?

Civil disobedience is not

something for us to fear.

It is after all

an American concept.

You see, Ghandhi draws his inspiration

not from a Hindu Scripture,

But from Henry David Thoreau who I believe

graduated from Harvard,

And lived by upon not

too far from here.

My opponent is right about one thing.

Thoreau was a Harvard grade,

And like many of us,

A bit self-righteous.

He once said:

/"Any man more right

than his neighbors...

/...constitutes a majority of one."

Thoreau, the idealist, could never know,

That Adolf Hitler would

agree with his words.

The beauty and burden of

democracy is this:

"No idea prevails without

the support of the majority".

The people decide the

moral issues of the day,

Not a majority of one.

Majorities do not decide

what is right or wrong.

Your conscience does.

So why should us citizens

surrender his the whole conscience

/To a legacy.

/We must never, ever kneel down...

Before the tyranny of a majority.

We can't decide which laws

to obey, which to ignore.

If we could, I'd never

stop for a red light.

My father is one of those men

that stand between us and chaos.

A police officer.

I remember the day his partner,

/His best friend...

/Was gunned down in the line of duty.

Most vividly of all, I remember

the expression on my dads face.

Nothing...

That erodes the rule of law

can be moral.

No matter what name we give it.

Why doesn't he say something?

In Texas...

...they lynch negroes.

My teammate and I...

Saw a man strung by his neck.

and set on fire.

We drove to a lynch mob.

We pressed our faces

against the floor board.

I looked at my teammates.

I saw the fear in their eyes.

And worse, the shame.

What was this negro's crime?

That he should be hung without trial

in a dark forest filled with fog.

Was he a thief?

Was he a killer?

Or just a negro?

Was he a sharecropper?

A preacher?

Were his children waiting up for him?

And who are we to just lie there

And do nothing.

No matter what he did,

the mob was the criminal.

But the law did nothing,

Just left us wondering: Why?

My opponent says:

"Nothing that erodes the rule of law

can be moral."

But there is no rule of law in

the Jim Crow South.

Not, when negroes

are denied to housing,

turned away from schools,

hospitals,

And not,

when we are lynched.

St. Augustine said:

"An unjust law is no law at all."

Which means I have a right,

even a duty to resist.

With violence or civil disobedience...

You should pray

I choose the latter.

/In tonight debate...

/Between Harvard University,

/And Wiley College.

And the winner is...

Wiley College.

Just 7 years later in

founded the Congress of Racial Equality.

And became a leader in the

civil rights movement.

After a long life

of teaching and writing.

James Farmer Sr. passed away in 1961.

on the day before

Samantha Booke, a lawyer,

took the first Freedom Ride to Alabama.

Henry Lowe went on study theology

at the University of California.

and became a minister.

Melvin Tolson became a

world renowned poet.

He continued his work with

Southern Tenant Farmers' Union.

By the end of 1936, it had

For ten years the Wiley College

debate team went undefeated.

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