An Open Letter to Denzel Washington

Dear Mr. Washington,

I see that today is your birthday, so I wanted to join the chorus of well-wishers.

But I don't just want to say, "Happy Birthday." I want to say, "Thank you."

Thank you for the work you have done over the years that has illuminated the complexity of being human. Not all of your movies have been great. But some have been. And in my view, some have been better than anyone seems to have noticed - I think particularly of "Fallen," and of "The Siege." Thank you for doing them all, for crossing genres, for not being a one-trick pony.

And thank you for how you've lived your life. I don't hold the view that every Black celebrity represents the entire Black race, but since I know that some people do hold that view, I am grateful for how you have represented us, whether you wanted to or not. I'm sure that you have had many opportunities to engage in foolishness that would demean the race (Black or human, take your choice). But not once have I seen a video clip, a story, or even a headline of you doing so. On the contrary, you have always come across as a man worth respecting, and more than that, a man worth knowing.

Later today, I think I'll kick back with my wife to watch your biography on Biography. And as we watch, I'll wish that I could be with you for just a minute, just long enough to look you in the eye and shake your hand while saying this (but for now this will have to do): Happy birthday, sir, and thank you. I appreciate you more than I know how to say.

Denzel and Oprah and Willie Lynch

I've seen three new movies in the past month or so: "The Golden Compass," "Legend," and "The Great Debaters."

"The Great Debaters" first: very well-made, with fine performances. I'd recommend it, and I'd see it again. But...

...even as I felt the warm glow that Denzel, Oprah et al. obviously intended for me to feel at the end, it faded a bit when the title card came up stating that James Farmer Jr went on to found CORE, simply because that bit of indisputable fact reminded me that the very touching scene I had just seen was made up, that Mr. Farmer and his team had not debated Hahvahd.

The fact that the Wiley debaters never went up against Harvard - a fact the filmmakers freely acknowledge - raised the question, right in the midst of my good feelings, "How much of this movie should I believe?"

I saw the movie with several family members, and a nephew pointed out that in 1935, no debate team would have been likely to refer to Hitler as the Wiley team does in the movie, for his evil was not yet widely known. He also said that he has long had doubts about the veracity of the Willie Lynch speech that Prof. Tolson refers to in the movie.

I remembered having read something that challenged the truth of the Willie Lynch story, and Googled the name. The earliest reference I found was by a librarian at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.

A more complete deconstruction of the speech on the Black Educator website makes it clear that Willie Lynch is a myth.

Given how easy it was to locate this material (Google is flat-out amazing), I find it annoying that neither Denzel nor Oprah nor (apparently) anyone in their employ did the 10 minutes' worth of fact-checking to dispense of Willie Lynch.

At least, I hope they didn't. The more disturbing possibility is that they knew the Willie Lynch story to be not merely a myth, but a myth that probably originated some 60 years after the movie's time period...and inserted it anyway.

I certainly know that movies have historically played fast and loose with history, and accept the genre's convention of adding imagination to fact for dramatic emphasis. But adding outright falsehood in opposition to fact - especially in a movie that is trying so hard to teach us - is another thing altogether (what would Prof. Tolson say?).

3.5 out of 5 stars.