| Notes |
- Henrietta Bell Wells, the first female on the debate team of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, which rose to national prominence in the 1930s and inspired last year's movie "The Great Debaters," has died. She was 96.
Ms. Wells died Feb. 27 at a nursing home in Baytown, Texas, near Houston, according to news reports. The cause was not given. She was the last surviving member of the debate team she joined in 1930, according to reports.
Born Henrietta Pauline Bell on Jan. 11, 1912, in Houston, she was reared by her single mother. She later recalled growing up in the South when black shoppers weren't allowed to try on clothes in stores. Her family's home was searched by police after a race riot in Houston in 1917, she said in a 2007 interview with the Houston Chronicle.
Ms. Wells was valedictorian of her senior class at Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston. After graduating in 1929, she enrolled at Wiley College on a scholarship. The college had been founded soon after the Civil War by the Freedman's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to provide higher education for black Americans.
In 1930, her English professor, Melvin B. Tolson, invited Ms. Wells, a freshman, to join the debate team. Tolson was a noted poet and a keen debater who set the team on a 10-year winning streak.
"I was the only girl and the only freshman," Ms. Wells said of the team in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. "They didn't seem to mind."
It wasn't an easy commitment to make. Along with classes and debate practice, she supported herself by working at the Wildcat Inn, a campus hangout, and doing housekeeping work at a campus dormitory.
Tolson's teaching style was rigorous and testy, Ms. Wells recalled in a 2007 interview on ABC's "Good Morning America." He would walk into class, slam the door, and fire off a question. One she always remembered: "Bell, what is a verb?"
Before debates he gave Ms. Wells pointers on how to deliver her argument. "You've got to punch something in there to wake the people up," she recalled him telling her.
The Wiley Debate Team won contests against far more prominent and larger black colleges, including Tuskegee and Howard universities. The team broke new ground in 1930 when it took on law students from the University of Michigan, in what is said to be the first interracial college debate.
"We felt at the time that it was a giant step toward desegregation," Ms. Wells told the Houston Chronicle last year.
Neither side was declared a winner in that competition, she later recalled, but it opened the way to other interracial college debates.
Wiley scored its most famous victory in 1935 when the team beat the University of Southern California, the national debate champion.
Last year Tolson and the Wiley team were the subject of "The Great Debaters," with Denzel Washington as the inspirational coach. In the movie, the only woman on the team was based partly on Ms. Wells and played by actress Jurnee Smollett.
Mrs. Wells advised Washington on the movie, using her scrapbooks as visual aids. She urged him to play Tolson, something he at first was not inclined to do.
Washington called her "another grandma."
Ms. Wells stayed on the debate team for one year and then dropped out of the competition because she needed to earn more money to support herself.
After graduation she returned to Houston and worked as a social worker. She also taught in the Houston public school system.
She married the Rev. Wallace L. Wells. He died in 1987.
Ms. Wells had no immediate survivors.
Henrietta Bell Wells, the only woman, the only freshman and the last surviving member of the 1930 Wiley College debate team that participated in the first interracial collegiate debate in the United States, died on Feb. 27 in Baytown, Tex. She was 96.
Her friend Edward Cox confirmed the death.
The story of the team, called the Great Debaters in last year's movie of the same name, began in 1924 at Wiley College, a small liberal arts college in Marshall, Tex., founded a half century earlier by the Methodist Episcopal Church to educate "newly freed men."
Melvin B. Tolson arrived at the all-black school that autumn to teach English and other subjects. He also started a debate team.
Mr. Tolson, who would win wide distinction as a poet, saw argumentation as a way to cultivate mental alertness. Wiley was soon debating and defeating black colleges two and three times its size.
In 1930, Mr. Tolson decided to break new ground. He managed to schedule a debate with the University of Michigan Law School, an all-white school. Wiley won. Other debates with white schools followed, culminating with Wiley's 1935 victory over the national champion, the University of Southern California.
Mr. Tolson's stunningly successful debate team was portrayed in "The Great Debaters," directed by Denzel Washington. Describing the cinematic young debaters in The Chicago Sun-Times, the critic Roger Ebert wrote, "They are black, proud, single-minded, focused, and they express all this most dramatically in their debating."
In the fall of 1930, Henrietta Bell, who would later marry Wallace Wells, was a freshman in an English class taught by Mr. Tolson. The professor urged her to try out for the debate team, because she seemed to be able to think on her feet. She was the first woman on the team.
In an interview with The Houston Chronicle in 2007, she said the boys "didn't seem to mind me."
But the work was far from easy. Miss Bell attended classes during the day, had three campus jobs and practiced debating at night. The intensity of debating was reflected in Mr. Tolson's characterization of it as "a blood sport."
But the hard work paid off. In the interview with The Chronicle, Mrs. Wells declared, "We weren't intimidated."
Henrietta Pauline Bell was born on the banks of Buffalo Bayou in Houston on Oct. 11, 1912, and raised by a hard-pressed single mother from the West Indies. When riots broke out in 1917 over police treatment of black soldiers at a World War I training camp, the family's house was searched. Mrs. Wells recalled being unable to try on clothes in segregated stores.
She did not debate in high school but was valedictorian of her class. She earned a modest scholarship from the Y.M.C.A. to go to Wiley, Episcopal Life reported.
In the spring of 1930, Miss Bell, her teammates and her chaperone arrived at the Seventh Street Theater in Chicago. It was the largest black-owned theater in town, because no large white-owned facility would admit a racially mixed audience, according to an article in The Marshall News-Messenger. Mrs. Wells remembered a standing-room-only crowd.
She wore a dark suit and had her hair cut in a boyish bob. In an interview with Jeffrey Porro, one of the screenwriters of "The Great Debaters," she felt very small on that very big stage. "I had to use my common sense," she said.
She remembered Mr. Tolson urging her to punch up her delivery. "You've got to put something in there to wake the people up," he had said.
Mrs. Wells told The Chronicle, "It was a nondecision debate, but we felt at the time that it was a giant step toward desegregation."
She debated for only one year, because of the need to work for money. She kept up with drama, which Mr. Tolson also coached. After graduating from college, she returned to Houston, where she met Mr. Wells and married. He was a church organist and later an Episcopal minister. She worked as a teacher and social worker.
Mrs. Wells advised Mr. Washington on the movie, using her scrapbooks as visual aids. She urged him to play Mr. Tolson, something he at first was not inclined to do. He called her "another grandma."
Mr. Wells died in 1987. Mrs. Wells left no immediate survivors.
Her advice to today's students was straightforward: "Learn to speak well and learn to express yourself effectively."
She learned this lesson directly from Mr. Tolson, whom she called her crabbiest and best teacher. He was known for issuing intellectual challenges immediately upon entering the classroom.
A typical salutation: "Bell! What is a verb?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/us/12wells.html
Maintained by: Laurie
Added: 27 Jul 2008
Henrietta Bell Wells, widow of the late Rev. Wallace L. Wells, was a native Houstonian, and was the first child baptized in St. Clement's Episcopal Church. She was the Valedictorian of Wheatley High School and Charter President of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Wiley College. Active in debating and dramatics, she was awarded the Omega Psi Phi Colonel Charles E. Young Service Award at graduation. Education continued at Indiana, Temple, and Texas Southern Universities. She was a YWCA Secretary in Houston, Oakland, California, and New York City; was caseworker and supervisor at Lake County Dep't. of Public Welfare, Gary, Indiana; directed Army Clubs at Camp Shanks, New York, and Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania; taught in public schools in Gary, New Orleans, and Houston; and was Dean of Women at Dillard University, New Orleans. She was a Life Member of the YWCA; member of YWCA Garden Club; Golden Life Member, Delta Sigma Theta; and member Daughters of the King, St. James' Church.
Survivors are loyal friends; godchildren; and a nephew-in-law, Cameron Wells, Jr. and his family of Houston, Texas. A Memorial Mass was said at St. James' Episcopal Celebrant, followed by interment at Paradise North Cemetery.
Published in Houston Chronicle on Feb. 29, 2008
Maintained by: Susann
Added: 14 Apr 2010
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