Denzel Washington’s “The Great Debaters” is every bit the Oprah Winfrey-backed weeper one would expect. But — and this is a very significant but — it exhibits an intellectual curiosity and a willingness to bluntly address the more horrifying aspects of human nature that elevates the material out of the realm of the after-school special.

Unlike so many other feel-good, based-on-true-events epics, which whitewash the gritty details in order to paint the perfect postcard, “The Great Debaters,” which makes its premiere on Tuesday, has more the feel of a comprehensive photo album — some staged poses mixed in with the candid shots. It’s a puffy, but believable, tribute to a powerful moment in time.

For better or worse, these are the two forces — puff and plausibility — that tug at each other throughout this story of an unlikely Texas debate team, composed solely of black students, who in 1935 vaulted racial barriers and stood toe-to-toe with their white counterparts from Harvard. As directed by Mr. Washington, who also stars, we see in almost every major scene a determination to keep this convincing bit of history from veering into cliché. Even in the Boston-set debate of the finale, when the music soars, smiling heads nod, and hands slowly begin to clap, Mr. Washington strips away the frills and gives us one central speech from the heart that is pure in intent, clear in meaning, and raw in presentation.

Of course, the majority of the movie is a build-up to this final meeting of the minds. The story is set almost exclusively in Marshall, Texas, on the campus of the all-black Wiley College. Mr. Washington plays the poet, professor, and activist Melvin B. Tolson, who also served as the school’s debate coach. Tolson is a man who sees, in the power of words and ideas, the opportunity for a generation of oppressed students to conquer Jim Crow by winning arguments and owning the truth.

When Tolson isn’t teaching or running debate practice, where he remorselessly shoots down his students’ arguments in a verbal form of tough love, he’s organizing clandestine, late-night meetings between local sharecroppers, urging them to organize a biracial union of workers. The meetings are broken up by the local sheriff (Eric Kelly McFarland), who publicly brands Tolson a Communist in an effort to isolate the professor within his own community.

The charge eventually forces the professor to miss the Harvard competition — the contest for which he has sent letters and organized scrimmages in hopes of bringing it to reality — and he hands the baton to young Samantha (Jurnee Smollett) and James (Denzel Whitaker), the students who will take the stage and, through radio, address not just the Harvard campus or the city of Boston, but the nation.

In a limited but powerful fashion, the story offers us glimpses of the pervasive racism surrounding Tolson’s academic bubble, and it’s enough to cut through the formulaic melodrama and remind us of what was at stake that day at Harvard when white children of privilege and black children of inequity and fear met to debate the issue of civil disobedience. Both our young heroes command the stage with vigor. Ms. Smollett bursts into a bravado that, while slightly forced, suggests the intensity and assuredness of a woman seizing the moment fate has handed her.

But it’s the 17-year-old Mr. Whitaker who plays against type. There’s nothing celebratory or exclamatory about him. He’s a young, scared child, trying to make his father proud. Mr. Washington holds all the trumpets and confetti at bay just long enough to allow his young star to steal the show. As Mr. Whitaker takes the stage, his words echoing off the storied arches, his meticulously researched arguments tossed aside in favor of sharing with the world the cold, brutal truth about the Other America, “The Great Debaters” radiates with honesty, decency, and authenticity. Ms. Winfrey produced it, sure, but cynics should remember that if anyone does, she knows a good story when she sees it.

ssnyder@nysun.com