[2] This work was depicted in the 2007 biopic The Great Debaters, produced by Oprah Winfrey, starring and directed by Denzel Washington as Tolson.

Reverend Tolson studied throughout his life to add to the limited education he had first received, even taking Latin, Greek and Hebrew by correspondence courses.

In 1922, Tolson married Ruth Southall of Charlottesville, Virginia, whom he had met as a student at Lincoln University.

[5] He was followed by Arthur Lincoln, who as an adult became a professor at Southern University; Wiley Wilson; and Ruth Marie Tolson.

[4] After graduation, Tolson and his wife moved to Marshall, Texas, where he taught speech and English at Wiley College (1924–1947).

[4][8] There, Tolson also co-founded the black intercollegiate Southern Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts, and directed the theater club.

[4] Tolson mentored students such as James Farmer and Heman Sweatt, who later became civil rights activists.

[10] Tolson was a man of impressive intellect who created poetry that was "funny, witty, humoristic, slapstick, rude, cruel, bitter, and hilarious," as reviewer Karl Shapiro described the Harlem Gallery.

"[citation needed] In 1965, Tolson was appointed to a two-year term at Tuskegee Institute, where he was Avalon Poet.

[4] From October 1937 to June 1944, Tolson wrote a column for The Washington Tribune that he called "Cabbage and Caviar"; a selection of the columns, in a volume also titled Caviar and Cabbage, edited and with an introduction by Robert M. Farnsworth, was published by the University of Missouri Press in 1982.

[7] Tolson's Libretto for the Republic of Liberia (1953), another major work, is in the form of an epic poem in an eight-part, rhapsodic sequence.

These were poems written during his year in New York, and they represented a mixture of various styles, including short narratives in free verse.

This collection was influenced by the loose form of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology.