Dr. Thomas Freeman remembers that moment more than four decades ago in Atlanta when he pointed out Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to his Texas Southern University, or TSU, debate team students:
Flanked by bodyguards, as he often was during the civil rights movement, King was dining at the same restaurant as Freeman and his wide-eyed young charges. But when King caught sight of Freeman, he surprised the Houston contingent by coming to the table, offering Freeman a handshake and showering praise on a religion course he had taught in 1947 as a Morehouse College visiting professor.
“If not for that encounter, I might never have realized Martin was in my class in 1947,” Freeman says with a chuckle. “Imagine how taken aback I was.”
A TSU professor of philosophy since 1949 and an educator for 66 years, Freeman has taught and influenced generation after generation of college students. Thousands have taken his classes and participated on debate teams. Most have not become as world-famous as King, but untold numbers have risen to the top of fields such as law, education, government and politics.
Freeman is best-known for coaching TSU’s highly acclaimed debate team, which has won hundreds of awards, traveled the globe and during the period when Freeman and King became re-acquainted, helped desegregate college forensics.
For Freeman, educating young people is as much a calling as one that led him into the ministry. He also has been a church pastor in Houston for 60 years.
Ironically, he never meant to stay more than nine months — much less pass his 91st birthday this year — at TSU or to become any sort of forensics guru.
