It is not every day that Denzel Washington and Oprah Winfrey do a movie together about a historically black college with fewer than 1,000 students.
But that’s what happened when the pair learned about a David and Goliath matchup in which Wiley College’s 1935 debate team won a national championship against Harvard University and also beat other perennial oratorical powerhouses.
In 2004, the United Methodist-related college in Marshall, Texas, began to receive inquiries from Hollywood about Melvin B. Tolson, leader of Wiley’s first debate team.