This movie was very inspiring and had many morals of value to teach people of many ages. The most suspensful part of this movie was when Mr. Melvin B. Tolson and his debate team of three (at that time) came across a lynching mob of white people. The experience for the young 14 year old boy, James Farmer Jr., was one that won the debate for his team while up against Harvard's debate team. What he said to his audience was very emotional for me and inspired me. In the end I would give this movie 4 stars because while it was an amazingly inspirational story to speak out against what is wrong, it was hard for me to relate to. It was hard to relate to because I did not grow up in the time that the movie took place in.
Below I have provided the speech that Mr. Farmer Jr. gave at the Harvard debate.
James Farmer Jr.: In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. 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 housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law in 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.
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