MELVIN B. TOLSON (1898-1966)
Saturday, February 23rd, 2008Click image
Denzel Washington as Melvin B. Tolson in the 2007 movie, The Great Debaters
While the 2007 film, The Great Debaters, extolled the role that debate coach Melvin B. Tolson played in guiding a small, historically black Wiley College team to participate in a debate at Harvard University during the hideously lynch-happy America of the 1930s, the movie completely overlooks the eventual emergence and significance of Tolson as a major 20th century American poet.
Melvin B. Tolson
A poet who would not receive critical acclaim until after his death, Melvin B. Tolson was nonetheless respected by such distinguished writers as Arna Bontemps, and Langston Hughes. Born Melvin Beaunorus Tolson in Moberly, Missouri, he was the son of a Methodist minister. He attended Fisk University and then Lincoln University, where he would cultivate his legendary public speaking and debating skills. His time as a graduate student at Columbia University exposed Tolson to the Harlem Renaissance, an experience which inspired A Gallery of Harlem Portraits, his first poetry collection.
Click on cover to read Brad Haas’ review
A vast complex of more than 300 poems, the structure of Portraits was inspired by Edgar Lee Masters‘ Spoon River Anthology (1916). The manuscript, however, could not find a publisher, so it was shelved for forty years until it was published posthumously in 1979. Undaunted, Tolson continued to write while devoting himself to numerous other activities. A popular and committed teacher of English and American literature at Wiley College in Texas, he also coached the junior varsity football team, directed the college theater program, and trained a champion debate team. From 1937 to 1944 Tolson wrote a weekly column, “Caviar and Cabbage,” for the Washington Tribune; selected columns were published in 1982 under the same title. Tolson also served as mayor of Langston, Oklahoma. Elected when he was 54, he held office for four terms.
Tolson was nationally recognized as a poet of considerable talent when his poem “Dark Symphony” was awarded first prize in the 1940 American Negro Exposition by judges Frank Marshall Davis, Arna Bontemps, and Langston Hughes. His debut volume of poetry, Rendezvous with America, subsequently appeared in 1944. It was followed by Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953) — written while Tolson was Poet Laureate of Liberia — and Harlem Gallery: Book I, The Curator (1965). Noted for its technical mastery and intellectual rigor, Tolson’s poetry does not shy away from difficult subjects, teachling both literary aesthetics and social analysis with a formidable precision that requires the reader’s careful and concentrated attention.
Wiley College Debate Team, 1935
(M.B. Tolson, center)
 Classic Barbie
     
    
