The Wiley debate team’s history goes back to 1924 when Melvin Beaunorus Tolson took a job teaching English and speech at Wiley College (now Wiley University). Tolson also served as the football coach and speech and debate coach. On October 28, 1924, he founded the Forensic Society of Wiley College debate team.
In early 1930, the Wiley Debate Team debated white law students from the University of Michigan, becoming one of the first teams from a Black college (HBCU) to debate a white college team in United States history. The debate venue was the African American-owned Seventh Street Theater in Chicago, Illinois since most white owned venues at the time prohibited mixed audiences due to racial segregation.
In March 1930, the Wiley Debate Team became the first Black college to debate a white university in the South when it competed with Oklahoma City University at Avery Chapel in Oklahoma City. Despite the fact that interracial debates were seen as being controversial at the time, Tolson considered them events that would bring Blacks and whites closer. “When the finest intellectuals of black youths and white youth meet,” he wrote “the thinking person gets the thrill of seeing beyond the racial phenomena the identity of worthy qualities”. Despite the debate team’s remarkable success, their contests usually failed to make local and state newspapers due to racism. Nonetheless, by the mid-1930s, the success of Wiley’s debate team prompted others to call it “Harvard West of the Mississippi.”
During the 1934-35 debate season, the Wiley Debate Team continued to defeat their opponents. As a result, they set out on what Tolson called the Interracial Goodwill Tour to debate a few colleges on their way to California to challenge the then reigning Pi Kappa Delta national champion, the University of Southern California (USC).
In the spring of 1935, the Wiley Debate Team was invited to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, to challenge the Forensic Frogs. Texas Christian University became the first major white college in the South to invite a Black college team onto its campus. Wiley debaters Hobart Jarrett and Cleveland Gay defeated the Forensic Frogs, and surprisingly, the crowd rushed to the stage to shake their hands and congratulate them for their win.
On March 22, 1935, Jarrett and Gay defeated Willis Jacobs and John Kennedy from the University of New Mexico at El Paso Negro High School. Next, they faced a San Francisco State Teachers College team before heading to Los Angeles to face the USC debate team.
On April 2, 1935, Jarrett and Henry Heights debated the USC in front of a crowd of 2,200 at Bovard Hall. Despite the debate ending in a no-decision, the Wiley Debate Team’s achievements were considered monumental. They were never proclaimed national champion by Pi Kappa Delta, but they earned the informal title, “The Great Debaters,” a testament to their skills and legacy.
Notable members of the Wiley Debate Team included Henrietta Bell Wells, the first female debate team member, and James Farmer Jr., who would go on to cofound the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. CORE by the 1960s would become one of the most successful civil rights organizations of the era. In 2007, the Wiley debate team was featured in the film The Great Debaters, starring Denzel Washington as Melvin Tolson. That film further solidified their legacy.
