It took 74 years, but students from Wiley College and Southern Methodist University finally held a debate, the Associated Press reported. Wednesday’s debate, originally scheduled for 1935, would have been the first debate between a historically black and a historically white college.

Wiley College, which gained recent fame in The Great Debaters, a 2007 film starring Denzel Washington, lost the debate, 3-0. But Ben Voth, debate coach at SMU, said the official winner did not matter.

“Just in having this debate we are all winners because we have overcome a history of racism and divisiveness,” Mr. Voth said, according to The Dallas Morning News. Held on the Southern Methodist campus, in Dallas, the debate focused on whether the terrorist-detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, should be shut down.

The original debate was purportedly called off amid negative publicity surrounding the civil rights-related arrest of Melvin B. Tolson, who in 1935 led the Wiley team to beat the national debate champions, the University of Southern California, the Dallas paper reported. The team disbanded during World War II, but formed again after the release of the 2007 film. —Steven Bushong