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The Great Debaters (Persuasive Speech)

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The Great Debaters (Persuasive Speech)
Samantha Booke: Resolved: The Negroes should be admitted to state universities. My partner and I will prove that blocking a Negros’s admission to a state university is not only wrong, it is absurd. The Negro people are not just the color in the American fabric. They are the thread that holds that all together. Consider the legal and historical record. May 13, 1865, Sergeant Crocker, a Negro is the last soldier to die in the Civil War. In 1918 the first US soldiers decorated for bravery in France are Negroes Henry Johnson and Nedham Roberts. In 1920 the New York Times announces that the "n" in "negro" would hereafter be capitalized.

American: To force upon south what they are not ready for, would result in nothing but more racial hatred. Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, he is perhaps the most eminent Negro scholar in America,
He comments:
/"It's a silly waste of money...
/...time and temper...
/...to try to pelt a powerful majority to do...
/...what they're determined to not to do."

Henry Lowe: My opponent so conveniently chose to ignore the fact, that W. E. B. Du Bois is the first Negro who received a PhD, from a white college called Harvard.

American: Dr. Du Bois, he adds:
/"It is impossible,
/"Impossible for a Negro to receive a proper education...
/...at a white college."

Henry Lowe: The most eminent Negro scholar in America is the product of the United League education. You see, Du Bois knows all too well the white man's resistance to change. But that's no reason to keep a black man out of any college. If someone didn't force upon the south something it wasn't ready for, I'd still be in chain, and Miss Booke here'd be running from out of an asset.

American: I do admit it. It is true. Far too many whites are afflicted with the disease of racial hatred and because of racism it would be impossible for a Negro to be happy in a southern white college today. And if someone is unhappy it is impossible to see how they could receive a proper education. Yes, the time will

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