Melvin B. Tolson
Published on Nov 23, 2015
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
MELVIN B. TOLSON
- American Modernist Poet
- Educator
- Columnist
- Politician
If you didn't know who Melvin B. Tolson is. Denzel Washington played him in the 2007 American biopic period drama film "The Great Debater"
Melvin B. Tolson was born in Missouri in 1898, attended Fisk University and graduated from Lincoln University in 1923.
He earned an M.A. degree at Columbia University in 1931.
In 1922, Melvin Tolson married Ruth Southall of Charlottesville, Virginia, whom he had met as a student at Lincoln University. Their first child was Melvin Beaunorus Tolson, Jr., who, as an adult, became a professor at the University of Oklahoma. He was followed by Arthur Lincoln, who as an adult became a professor at Southern University
In the movie Melvin B. Tolson ventures an out incognito as an organizer for a national sharecropper's union. He's decide as a dangerous radical, local whites believe: probably a communist. But he's organizing both poor whites and blacks, whose servitude is equal.
He keeps his politics out of the classroom, however, where he conceals a different kind of secret: He is one of America's leading poets. Although the movie barely touches on it, Tolson published long poems in such magazines as the Atlantic Monthly and in 1947 was actually named poet laureate of Liberia.
Heroic Traits
- A Leader
- Teacher
- Courageous
- Self-sacrificing
- Inspirational
