Parents Guide for
The Great Debaters (2007)

There is one glimpse of a sex scene in the film. There is also another scene where a drunk man kisses a lady with her legs around him as he exits a car. There are dance scenes in the film which are mildly suggestive. There is no nudity.

In the beginning of the movie, there is a fight scene between two men over a woman, who is the wife of one of the men who is the bigger of the two. The smaller man is the first one punched, but is actually "winning" the fight before it is broken up.

There is a scene where a car hits and kills a large pig on a road, which was bloodied from the impact.

During a secret meeting inside a barn, a raid of vigilantes break in, including a scene of a car breaking in the door. A boy is slapped in the face by his father after an argument. A sheriff talks to a black man in his office; the black man has a bloody black eye.

There is a lynching scene where a man is hung and looks skinned, and set on fire by a mob. Not long after this scene, two men scuffle in a hotel, but there are no punches thrown. A woman slaps a man in the face during a debate team meeting.

The word nigger is used several times in the film. One instance is when a white pig farmer sees his dead pig next to a car and says nigger while putting the pig away; the owner of the car is Black. Another instance is when one of the main characters says the word while making an argument.

In several scenes throughout the film when Blacks are interacting with Whites, they are called "boy." One was the previously mentioned pig farmer scene. Another is when a white sheriff calls a Black man boy when being told to free an arrested man.

One professor is shown smoking a pipe in one scene. There are several scenes of alcohol use, such as a hotel scene where two men drink a hand sized container of liquor; one of the men is 14 years old.

The lynching scene is a frightening scene in the film, as a black debate team encounters the white men doing the lynching. They narrowly escape the mob.