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T H E MAROON T I G E R
Page 14
DEBATING IN THE RETROSPECT
The intellectual giants (pygmies if you will) enjoyed
a rather successful season. Only three varsity debaters
returned and Coaches Tillman, Brazeal and Lindsay were
forced to work hard to put out a well-rounded squad.
The aspirants for the squad realized, however, that More
house had a debating reputation to maintain and bent
nobly to the task of perpetuating the reputation. On
December 11, Morehouse met the University of London
in an intellectual combat, or funfest, as some would
term it. Morehouse was represented by J. C. Long, ’36,
and L. Raymond Bailey, ’34, of the graduate school.
The debate was quite interesting and entertaining to the
large crowd that attended. We are looking forward to
another English debate in the fall of 1935. Highlights
were the exchange of wit and Bailey’s hoop skirt joke.
A virtually new team had to be composed to meet
Howard University on March 1st. The shipment of arms
and munitions question was debated. Prof. Tillman re
marked concerning his varsity debaters, “One was a
tragedian stabbing folks and the other was roaming
through Florida with the Glee Club and Orchestra, blow
ing a piccolo. I couldn’t use them.” In the Howard
debate, however, the squad of Alvin Harrison, W. 0.
Bryson and B. Alfonso Jones represented Morehouse
well. The debate throughout was characterized by a
smoothness that gives credit to the coaches of both teams.
On the 5th of April, the Maroon forensic lions (not
kittens) treked to Cheehaw to engage the Tuskegee lads
in intellectual combat. Those who debated there were
“Rev.” Samuel Woodrow Williams, B. Alfonso Jones
and J. Clinton Long. Prof. Tillman, the coach, accom
panied the team. During the debate, Jones boomed out
in stentorian tones, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury.”
Careful B. A. Williams had five minutes for rebuttal and
sat down six minutes too soon. According to Prof. Till
man, Long made the Tuskegee case clearer. (By the
way, Mr. Long wrote this.—Ed.) The Maroon debaters
made up for all shortcomings at the social after the
debate. There at the social with the beautiful Cheehaw
maidens around the debaters were fine speakers, espe
cially “Rev.” Williams, whose charming and magnetic
personality kept him surrounded with “femmes.” The
Tuskegee debating team was coached by Prof. Jerkins, a
Morehouse grad and a product of Prof. Tillman, who
has developed a horde of brilliant debaters. (Vi hat hap
pened to those this year? Search me.) The arms and
ammunitions question was debated in Tuskegee.
The next debates were the league debates on April
12th. Morehouse was represented in Atlanta against
Talladega by Alvin Harrison and Winfred 0. Bryson,
Jr. The league question was, “Resolved, That the na
tions should agree to prevent the international shipment
of arms and munitions.” The system of cross-question
ing in the debate was used quite effectively. A small
but responsive audience attended the Talladega debate
here. In the other league debate, the debating Johns,
John Henry Young and John Clinton Long, took on
Shaw at Raleigh. A young lady was on the Shaw team,
and Long had difficulty in substituting for gentlemen of
the opposition. Seriously discussing the arms traffic,
brilliant Young told the enthusiastic audience that the
young lady of the opposition could vouch for the fact
that arms were terrible things to have around one. It
did not take Young long to become the idol of Shaw
campus (he took six suits, by the way). The Shaw boys
fervently prayed, “Lord, make me more and more like
John Young.” Both Morehouse debaters fell in love—
Young at Shaw with one dame, and Long at St. Augus
tine with several ladies and the tennis courts. The sea
son was officially closed with Prof. Tillman’s swelegant
banquet at his residence, at which time the debaters
proved to be big eaters as well as big liars.
THE SLOW AND UNPRECOCIOUS
Thomas C. McDuffie
“The strength of a chain is measured by its weakest
link.”
Under the present system it is usually at an early age
to condemn to bread winning and factory slavery those
pupils who seem in any way slow or deficient in power
or inclinations to acquire through the memory cramming
process the conventional type of education. This is a
particularly great wrong both to society and the indi
vidual ; for, il it be admitted that in the development of
a higher form of average democracy is the pathway of
true progress, then should the slow and less ably en
dowed, the weak and simple, have extra pains taken to
develop what intellectual faculties they have to the high
est possible point—not only to enhance their value to
the state and to society, their productive abilities, but
also that their children may have the heredity of a better
parentage; and we dare claim that, among any given
one thousand of the so-called “poor scholars” who are
prematurely doomed to any early slavery at bread win
ning, with the minimum of mental training and with
no hand training at all, in any thousand of such will
be found many capable of becoming men and women
of mark, of genius, if they could be led along to a few
years later age and have the advantages of hand culture
and a chance to study mechanic arts or industrial train
ing in some of its branches which are adapted to their
peculiar mental drift.
It is a well-attested fact that many men and women
of exceptional ability are late and slow in giving any
evidence of strong mental power, and may never do so
until some mechanical or technical study, some form of
handicraft training, brings to the surface unexpected
talents of a high order.
In this manner will colleges and universities based on
the plan of alternate study and work, and that shall
hold pupils until years of maturity, be of most inesti
mable value, both in creating a higher average of intel
ligence among all, but also (and of greatest importance)
in finding and bringing out many men and women of
rare merit and usefulness, who, under the present sys
tem, are almost totally lost to the world and doomed,
like the (lowers of the desert, to bloom unseen and un
known. We are fully persuaded, if there were no other
reason for the demand, for a self-supporting system of
schools for higher education, that this alone would be
ample for a most comprehensive effort to establish such
in every county in the whole land, to promote the higher
average of citizenship by cultivating the slow and tin
precocious and by developing the latent geniuses from
those who only come to their full powers at a later age.
STUPID
Menchan— I lost my last job because I couldn’t learn
the scales.
Creque—Wanted to be a musician, eh?
Menchan—Oh, no; trying to get a job in a fish mar
ket.