TLNet
 

The Great Debaters (Finale)
James Farmer Jr in the Harvard Debate

Listen to the clip. Complete the missing words and then check your answers.
Brother: Why doesn’t he say something?
James: In Texas... they Negroes. My teammates and l saw a man strung up by his and set on . We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. l looked at my teammates. l saw the in their eyes...and worse...the .
What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung, without , in a dark forest filled with ? Was he a ? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children for him?
And who are we to just lie there and do ? No matter what he did, the mob was the . But the law did nothing,just left us wondering why.
My opponent says nothing that the rule of law can be .
But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow South, not when Negroes are housing, from schools, hospitals, and not when we are lynched.
St. Augustine said, “An law is no law at all,” which means l have a right, even a , to resist...with violence or civil disobedience.
You should l choose the .
Dean: In tonight's debate between Harvard University and Wiley College... And the is... Wiley College.