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Seminar on Prior Knowledge, The Great Debaters: Lesson 3 Worksheet: Melvin Beaunorus Tolson. The reading and questions on this worksheet are designed to provide you with knowledge to understand and better appreciate the events depicted in the Denzel Washington film (he stars and directs), The Great Debaters. Please use this reading comprehension worksheet to learn more about Professor Melvin Tolson.

Melvin Beaunorus Tolson (b. February 6, 1898, Moberly MO.; d. August 29, 1966, Guthrie OK): Melvin Tolson attended Fisk University before transferring to Lincoln University, where he received his bachelors degree in 1922. He took positions teaching English literature and coaching the debate team at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, but was inspired to develop his talent for poetry after attending Columbia University on a Rockefeller Foundation scholarship from 1931 to 1932. Tolsons year at Columbia put him in Harlem at the end of the Harlem Renaissance, and he became friendly with many writers associated with it, most notably Langston Hughes. In several poems over the next two decades, Tolson would revisit the atmosphere of 1930s Harlem.

Tolsons first major work, Rendezvous with America, was published in 1944. Throughout the 1940s, his poems, characterized by their allusive, complex, modernist style and their long poetic sequences, were published in such magazines and journals as the Atlantic Monthly, the Modern Quarterly, the Arts Quarterly, and Poetry. In 1947 the government of Liberia named Tolson its poet laureate and commissioned him to write a piece for the countrys centennial; the result was Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953). Tolsons best-known piece, the poetic sequence Harlem Gallery, was published in 1965. In 1966 he won the Arts and Letters Award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. A Gallery of Harlem Portraits, an extended work Tolson had begun with a single sonnet in 1932, was published posthumously in 1979.

Adapted from: Robinson, Lisa Clayton. Melvin Beaunorus Tolson. Encyclopedia Africana. Eds. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. New York: Basic Books, 1999. 1853.

I. Vocabulary

A. Inspire (verb):

B. Literature (noun):

C. Foundation (noun):

D. Scholarship (noun):

E. Renaissance (noun):

F. Rendezvous (noun):

G. Allusive (adjective):

H. Modernist (adjective):

I. Poet Laureate (noun):

J. Libretto (noun):

II. The Text

A. When and where was Melvin Tolson born? When and where did he die?

B. Where did Melvin Tolson attend college? Where, and when, did he receive his bachelors

degree?

The Text, continued

C. After graduating college, where did Melvin Tolson accept a position? Doing what?

D. What was Melvin Tolson inspired to do? Where and how did he begin to develop this talent?

E. When did Melvin Tolson attend Columbia Univerisity? In what important historical period did Melvin Tolsons time at Columbia University put him?

F. With whom did Melvin Tolson become friends during his time at Columbia University? Over the long term, what influence did Harlem have on Melvin Tolsons work?

G. What was Melvin Tolsons first major work? When was it published?

H. What characterized Melvin Tolsons poems throughout the 1940s? Where did he publish his work in that decade?

The Text, continued

I. What government named Melvin Tolson its poet laureate? When? What was the result of this?

J. What is Melvin Tolsons best known work? When was it published? What awards and honors did he receive at the end of his life?

III. Independent Practice: Please compose five sentences using any five words from your vocabulary list above