Penguin has just released a new
edition of:
Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna

with a new introduction by China Penguin, 2007.
[Order
directly from
Penguin] |

In
The Great Debaters, scheduled for a Christmas,
2007 release, Denzil Washington, who also directs the film,
plays
Melvin
Tolson, teacher and debate team coach at the historically
black Wiley College, in Marshall, Texas. In one of Love
Cemetery's several historical sections, Galland, writing
about the tremendous importance of education to the
African-American community, tells the story of Wiley and its
unbeatable debate team whose members included James Farmer, Jr.
who would go on to found CORE and lead Freedom Rides, and
Reverend Hamilton Boswell, whom she interviewed shor tly
before his death (pp 91-95). Rev. Boswell had served for
ten years as the chaplain of the California State Assembly and,
as pastor of Jones Methodist Church, had been a leader
in the San Francisco community. At the time of the interview,
Galland had no idea that a film about the debaters was in the
works. On her book tour, in Boston, she had a conversation with
Washington, who was filming a climactic debate scene at Harvard,
about Rev. Boswell, whom he knew of, but had not been able to
reach before he became too ill to be interviewed. Rev.
Boswell died in 2006 at age 92. He had told China an
unforgettable story of the lynching he had witnessed in 1936
while driving back to Marshall, with Tolson and Farmer,
from a debate in a small nearby town.
photo of Rev. Boswell: Tom Beil
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