James Farmer Jr. Quotes in The Great Debaters (2007)

James Farmer Jr.: In Texas they lynch Negroes. My teammates and I saw a man strung up by his neck and set on fire. We drove through a lynch mob, pressed our faces against the floorboard. I looked at my teammates. I saw the fear in their eyes and, worse, the shame. What was this Negro's crime that he should be hung without trial in a dark forest filled with fog. Was he a thief? Was he a killer? Or just a Negro? Was he a sharecropper? A preacher? Were his children waiting up for him? And who are we to just lie there and do nothing. No matter what he did, the mob was the criminal. But the law did nothing. Just left us wondering, "Why?" My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law in no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.

James Farmer Jr.: We do what we have to do in order to do what we want to do.

Melvin B. Tolson: Who is the judge?

Samantha, Henry Lowe, James Farmer Jr., Hamilton Burgess: The judge is God.

Melvin B. Tolson: Why is he God?

Samantha, Henry Lowe, James Farmer Jr., Hamilton Burgess: Because he decides who wins or loses. Not my opponeent.

Melvin B. Tolson: Who is your opponent?

Samantha, Henry Lowe, James Farmer Jr., Hamilton Burgess: He does not exist.

Melvin B. Tolson: Why does he not exist?

Samantha, Henry Lowe, James Farmer Jr., Hamilton Burgess: Because he is a mere dissenting voice of the truth I speak!

James Farmer Jr.: [opening package] Five dollars? Lowe, I got five dollars!

Henry Lowe: Yeah, I did too. It's called per diem. Want me to hold it for you?

James Farmer Jr.: No, not MY five dollars.

Samantha: [walks into the room waving her money in the air] I got five dollars! I got five dollars!

Henry Lowe: Yeah, me too.

Samantha: Well, mine is crisp.

[watches James gulp down a strawberry]

Samantha: James, this is high tea, all right? We nibble, we do not DEVOUR.

James Farmer Jr.: How do you know?

Samantha: [smiling] I don't.

Samantha: James, you know I value your friendship...

James Farmer Jr.: How can you value something you never had?

Samantha: So... we were never friends?

James Farmer Jr.: Maybe I don't want to be just your friend. Maybe it HURTS me to be just your friend!

James Farmer Jr.: We can't win without him!

[Melvin Tolson]

Samantha: You're wrong, we can't win without him.

[as she tosses a book at Farmer]

James Farmer Jr.: Thoreau?

Samantha: [after James protests his inability to debate with Samantha or Henry] James, you're the best researcher I've ever seen. We couldn't do this without you.

James Farmer Jr.: [angrily] Oh, there's PLENTY you do without me!