In the Heat of the Night Reax

My View on In the Heat of the Night

During my Talking About Freedom class, we watched the movie In the Heat of the Night and took notes on what we thought about the movie. 

Murder

During the movie officers find a rich white man dead on the street and they start to investigate the scene.

While the investigation was going on, an officer found a black man near the scene and took him into the police station for questioning. When he brought him to chief Gillespie, the black man explained that his name is Virgil Tibbs and he is a homicide police detective. This made me think about how prejudice the white police officers were towards Mr. Tibbs all because he is black.

"Separate but Equal"

Though that was not the only time that Mr. Tibbs experienced prejudice in the movie. Even when he finally decided to help solve the homicide case, he still experienced racism. While working on the case, Chief Gillespie did not trust Mr. Tibbs completely and even thought he was involved in the homicide at first. This shocked me because Mr. Tibbs is an educated black man who is not suspicious in any way. The only reason they treated him this way is because he is black. 

This truly shows how "separate but equal" is not real equality because although Mr. Tibbs is aloud to work as a detective like a white man, that does not stop people from treating him unfairly because of the color of his skin. 

Tibbs and Gillespie 

Although Tibbs' and Gillespie's relationship was rocky in the beginning of the movie, I feel like things started to change between them through the investigation. Gillespie treated Tibbs like all the other white cops and civilians in the movie with absolutely no respect. Toward the end though, I feel like Gillespie became more empathetic toward Tibbs and admired how TIbbs never thought about leaving the investigation when he was being treated poorly by the people around him. 

We see this when Tibbs and Gillespie visit Mr. Endicott and Tibbs almost gets jumped by Endicott's workers. While Tibbs and the workers are about to fight, Chief Gillespie stops them and tells them to leave Tibbs alone. This represents how Gillespie sees Tibbs as a co-worker and how he respects him. 

Different Women Roles in the Movie

We not only see how black men are treated by society back then, women were also treated much differently back then than how they are treated today.

I feel like while watching the movie, I noticed how women are treated based on their wealth and status. For example, when Mrs. Colbert (a wealthy white woman) was brought in for questioning, she was treated with respect and remorse for her husband's passing. While on the other hand Delores Purdy (a poor, white, pregnant, 16 year old girl) was brought in for questioning and was treated with no respect and was very harshly interrogated. 

This was not the only time Delores Purdy was treated unfairly. She was often judged for trying to get an abortion, even though it is clear that she is in no position to raise a child. We still see many women today that are fighting to keep their rights for abortion and how the laws on abortion affect many women's lives.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I liked how the movie portrayed how black people and white women were treated back then and I feel like the movie accurately showed how even though black people had equal rights, they were still treated unfairly. 

 

Reconstruction Video Reax Post

 

My View The Reconstruction Era Video

During our Talking About Freedom class we watched a video called Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. After listening to the video, I took notes on what I learned and how I reacted to what was going on at the time. 

In the beginning of the video, it talked about how a 21 year old man in 2015 shot up a church group filled with black people. This was ruled out as a hate crime. I was surprised by this because it was only 11 years ago when this happened which shows how racism is still present in today's society. 

Civil War

Moving into the Reconstruction Era in the video, it talks about the day Robert E Lee surrenders to U.S.S. Grant in Virginia on April 9, 1865. This began the early days of freedom for black people. At the start, former slaves were separated from slavery and started putting up flyers in hopes to reunite with there families. This made me realize that the consequences of slavery still effect there lives even after they are free.  

Freed Man’s Bureau

We especially see the effects that slavery left behind when talks about black people owning land came into play.

During this time, many black people did not have homes because they lived on the property of their slave owner. So many former slaves needed to find houses. This is when the Freed Man's Bureau was developed. This stated that former slaves needed to their old slave owner to grant them permission to own land. I was confused by this because it does not make sense to me on why they would need permission when they are not owned by a slave holder anymore. If they are free, why should they still need to get the "ok" from a white man to own property? 

Overall Reaction

Watching this video showed me that freedom did not mean equality for Black Americans after the Civil War. Even after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865, formerly enslaved people were left to rebuild their lives with very little. Families were torn apart and searching for one another, and many had no homes or land of their own. What stood out to me most was that even with the Freedmen’s Bureau, they still had to rely on white landowners to be able to own property. If they were truly free, they should not have needed anyone’s approval.

The video opened with the 2015 church shooting in Charleston, and I think it connects to everything that followed. The struggles of Reconstruction did not end in the 1800s. The racism that limited freedom then is still present today, only 11 years after that attack. This video taught me that to understand where we are now, we have to understand how unfinished the promise of freedom was in 1865.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was partially used to create this blog post. After I wrote most of my thoughts down on what I thought of the video, I asked Claude AI to write a conclusion for my blog post. I then added pictures to my blog before posting it.

GWTW Blog Post

My View on Gone With the Wind

After watching Part I of Gone With the Wind, I took notes on what I thought about the female characters in the movie. 

Mammy, who is played by Hattie McDaniel, is a slave that works in the household of Scarlett's family.

Although she was a side character in the story, she definitely was not a forgettable character. Mammy has a strong voice in the house and actively ordered people around to make sure they should be acting how they are supost to, especially Scarlett. For example, when Scarlett runs away from her house in the beginning of the movie after finding out Ashley is getting married, Mammy shouted at Scarlett to come back inside. 

Throughout the movie, I noticed the progression of the Civil War. In the beginning, I was surprised that the people in the South were excited to start a war instead of people fighting to prevent wars like in today's society. I think that Gone With the Wind did a good job presenting what life was like for women during the war. In the movie, we see Scarlett struggling to be away from her mom and having to work in a church where she treated soldiers that got hurt from battle. 

Scarlett had a hard time mentally being surrendered by the overwhelming amount of deaths and the brutal procedures being performed on the soldiers. She often became homesick and wanted to leave the church to see her mother. 

I think Scarlett's experience shows that although men endured the hardships of war, women had to deal with the struggles as well. The war opened up opportunities for women to work as nurses, which was once seen as a man's job.  Women were now able to show what they are capable of, saving thousands of soldiers in the process. An example of this would be Kate Cumming and Phoebe Pember who saved hundreds of soldiers in the South during the Civil War. 

I think the one thing that I thought was a little inaccurate during this movie was the fact that Scarlett was a nurse. Scarlett is known to be a young and very attractive girl that is able to charm her way into any mans' heart. Due to her character it is not likely that she would have been a nurse because the women that were hired in this time period were known to be on the older side and unattractive. They would hire women like this because they thought that attractive nurses would distract the soldiers from getting back on the battle field to win the war. 

While many men fought in the war, other men chose to profit from it. We see this through the character

Rhett Butler in the movie. I believe it is wrong for men like Rhett Butler to profit from the war because it shows they do not care about the effects the war will have on others, they only focus on how they will benefit from the war. 

In today's society it is still very common for people to profit from the war instead of fight. For example, in the last war in Iraq, many criminal groups like militias and insurgent organizations profited from the war by "oil smuggling, extortion and protection racketeering, kidnapping for ransom, human trafficking, the illicit cigarette trade" etc. It is unfortunate because many people try to stop wars from starting but often get ignored by people like this because they want to keep profiting of them.

 

EOTO2 Reax

Reconstruction, Two Ways: What Went Right and What Went Wrong

When two student groups tackled the Reconstruction era, one examined its successes and the other its failures. Watching from the audience, I came away with a fuller picture of a complicated period and a clear sense of which presentation helped me follow it best.

Group One: A Positive Outlook

The first group opened with the three Reconstruction Amendments. The 13th, passed in 1865, abolished slavery nationwide and freed about four million people. The 14th, in 1868, established birthright citizenship, equal protection, and due process, overturning the 1857 Dred Scott decision. The 15th, in 1870, barred states from denying votes based on race. Its effects included Black men serving in Congress, about 2,000 Black officeholders, and new public schools. The 15th Amendment was my biggest takeaway, since I had mostly focused on the 14th before.

The group also covered the first Black members of Congress. Hiram Revels, a minister and Union chaplain, became a U.S. senator from Mississippi in 1870. Joseph H. Rainey, born enslaved, became the first Black U.S. representative, elected directly by his constituents in South Carolina. Education was another theme: Howard, Fisk, Hampton, and Tuskegee were founded as education became a symbol of freedom. They also explained “40 acres and a mule,” which came from Sherman’s Special Field Order No. 15, a temporary wartime measure.

Group Two: Negative Effects

The second group turned to the era’s failures. They traced the Wilmington Massacre, in which a biracial government built by Black citizens and a fusion alliance of Republicans and Populists was overthrown in a political coup. They also examined the withdrawal of federal troops after the Compromise of 1877, which settled the disputed Hayes-Tilden election.

The group described Lincoln’s assassination as a major setback, since he had planned an approach for bringing Southern states back into the Union. Andrew Johnson’s conflicts with Congress then made Reconstruction harder. This was the part I learned the most from, because I hadn’t grasped how devastating that loss was.

Other topics included the Black Codes, first passed in Mississippi in November 1865 and adopted by nearly every Southern state by 1866. They granted some rights, like marrying and suing in court, but with conditions. The group also covered the rise of the KKK, which began in Tennessee as a social club for former Confederate soldiers before turning violent in 1868, and closed with voter suppression.

My Verdict

Both groups taught me something, but their delivery differed. Group One was organized, well paced, and clear, making it easy to take notes. Group Two summarized their information well on the slides, but their presentation ran long. Most presenters were quiet and hard to hear, and they seemed to rush to stay on time.

I preferred Group One because it was easier to follow and hear. Still, Group Two’s focus on setbacks gave me a fuller understanding of Reconstruction. Together, the presentations showed me an era of real progress and real loss.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used to create this blog post. I asked Claude AI to create a blog post in a journalistic style based on the notes and reactions I typed out in a google doc during the two presentations. I told Claude AI not to use any outside sources to create the blog post and to only use the notes that I made to create the blog post. I then copied the blog post Claude AI generated and pasted it into blogger.com. Lastly I rewrote any mistakes it made in the post and added pictures.

Plessy vs. Ferguson Trial

 

Separate but “Equal”: The Train Seat That Reshaped America

Homer Plessy bought a first-class ticket, boarded a train in New Orleans, and sat down. That’s it. That one small act ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

He wasn’t an ordinary passenger, though. Plessy was seven-eighths white and one-eighth of African descent, and he agreed to take part in a planned test case against Louisiana’s Separate Car Act. The law required equal but separate accommodations for white and non-white passengers, with a $25 fine or 20 days in jail for sitting in the wrong car. The group behind the challenge even hired a private detective to make sure Plessy was arrested for violating the Act. 

The Legal Case

Plessy’s lawyers argued that the law violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Court

ruled 7-1 against him in May 1896. Justice Henry Brown’s reasoning went like this: the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed political equality, but it was never meant to force social equality or a mixing of the races. He also argued that if separation felt like a badge of inferiority, that was only because Black Americans chose to read it that way. 

The Precedents

Defenders of the law didn’t just make this up on the spot. Brown leaned on Roberts v. City of Boston, where the Massachusetts high court held that Boston could set up separate schools for Black children. Brown pointed out that the Congress that wrote the Fourteenth Amendment knew about that ruling and didn’t try to undo it. There was also a Supreme Court case from 1890 involving a Mississippi law that required railroads to provide equal but separate cars, and the Court accepted the state court’s reading that it covered only travel within the state. The argument boiled down to this: segregation wasn’t some Southern oddity, because even abolitionist Massachusetts had signed off on a version of it. 

The Religious Argument

Here’s the part that surprises people. Brown’s opinion was built on law and “reasonableness,” not scripture. But in the wider public debate, plenty of segregation’s defenders reached for the Bible. Their favorite passage was Acts 17:26, which says God made all nations “of one blood” and also set “the bounds of their habitation.” The pitch was that God Himself had drawn lines between peoples, and Babel proved it. Defenders also pointed to churches that already worshiped in separate congregations as proof that separation and faith could coexist.

Opponents had real answers. Abolitionist preachers had long read “one blood” as a statement about shared humanity, not about hierarchy. Others pointed to Galatians 3:28, which says there’s neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. And Black churches often formed as a response to exclusion, not simple preference.

The Lone Dissent

Justice John Marshall Harlan dissented, writing that the Constitution is color-blind and tolerates no classes among citizens. It was a lonely position in 1896, but it’s the one history vindicated. 

What Happened Next

Plessy stayed the law of the land until 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education overturned it. Nearly six decades of “separate but equal” proved that separate was almost never equal. Studying the arguments for segregation, religious ones included, isn’t about endorsing them. It’s about understanding how respectable-sounding reasoning once held up an unjust system.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used to create this blog post. I first asked Claude AI to research about the Plessy vs. Ferguson case. I then told it to find arguments for segregation at that time based on religion. Next I told it to create a blog post on it's findings. I then copied the blog and pasted it into blogger.com. Lastly I read over the blog in case I wanted to make any changes, added the sources that Claude gave me, and added pictures before publishing it. 

Town Hall Post

 

 Elizabeth Cady Stanton Speech

Good evening,

My name is Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and I stand before you today as a woman who has dedicated her life to the pursuit of liberty, justice, and equality for all people.

I was born in Johnstown, New York, in 1815. As a young woman, I witnessed laws that denied women basic rights. Women could not vote, had little control over their property, and were often treated as if their voices did not matter. These injustices inspired me to spend my life fighting for change.

In 1840, my husband and I attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. There, I witnessed

another form of discrimination when women delegates were denied the right to participate simply because they were women. That experience strengthened my resolve to challenge inequality wherever it existed.

Eight years later, with Lucretia Mott and other courageous reformers, I helped organize the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention in the United States. There, I wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, declaring that "all men and women are created equal" and demanding equal rights, including the right to vote.

But the struggle for women's rights was closely tied to another great cause of our time: the abolition of slavery. Many women who fought for equality were also active in the anti-slavery movement. We believed that no human being should be owned, controlled, or denied freedom because of race or gender. The fight against slavery taught us that injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.

Throughout my life, I worked alongside abolitionists and reformers who sought to end the cruel institution of slavery. After the Civil War, I continued advocating for equal rights and citizenship for all Americans. While our movement sometimes faced disagreements and challenges, our goal remained clear: a nation where freedom and opportunity belong to everyone, not just a privileged few.

Today, I ask you to remember that progress is never achieved by silence. It is achieved when ordinary people are willing to stand up for what is right. Whether confronting slavery in the past or inequality in any form today, we must have the courage to speak, act, and demand justice.

Let us continue the work of building a society where every person, regardless of race or sex, is treated with dignity, equality, and respect.

Thank you.

AI DISSCOLSURE: A.I was used to create this blog post. For this assignment I was told to use an A.I. tool to create a Town Hall speech on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. I told Claude A.I. to do research on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and create a speech for a Town Hall Meeting as her. I then took the speech and copied is into blogger.com.

Trial/EOTO Reax Post

Reflecting on Our Mock Trial: State v. Mann and the Machinery of Injustice

Last week, half of our class staged a mock trial revisiting State v. Mann, the 1829 North Carolina Supreme Court case that still stands as one of the starkest illustrations of how slavery corrupted the law itself. Part of our class argued for John Mann's innocence, and the other part argued for his guilt, and watching both sides build their cases gave me a new appreciation for how legal reasoning could be twisted to serve an unjust system.

For those unfamiliar with the case: in 1828, John Mann, a bankrupt sea captain in Edenton, North
Carolina, had rented an enslaved woman named Lydia from her owner, a minor named Elizabeth Jones. When Lydia committed a minor offense and tried to flee a whipping, Mann shot and severely wounded her. A local jury convicted him of assault and battery, reasoning that since he only hired Lydia rather than owned her, he had no right to inflict such violence. Mann appealed, and Justice Thomas Ruffin overturned the conviction, ruling that hirers and enslavers alike could not be criminally punished for assaulting the people they held in bondage.

What struck me most during our trial was how the "not guilty" side constructed a genuinely coherent argument—not because the underlying premise was just, but because it followed the internal logic of a slaveholding society with chilling consistency. Their argument echoed Ruffin's own reasoning: that slavery could only function if the enslaver's authority was total and unquestionable. As Ruffin himself wrote, "the power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect." Hearing my classmates voice that logic aloud, even in the context of a debate exercise, was uncomfortable in a productive way. It forced me to sit with how ordinary legal language could be marshaled to defend something monstrous.

The "guilty" side, meanwhile, grounded their argument in ideas that feel almost self-evident to us now: that inflicting grievous bodily harm on another person, regardless of their legal status, should carry consequences. But what made their argument compelling wasn't just moral appeal—it was their use of the original jury's reasoning about the limits of a hirer's authority, showing that even within 1828's legal framework, a narrower and more humane ruling was possible. Ruffin's decision wasn't inevitable; it was a choice.

I left the trial with a clearer sense of why State v. Mann became such a rallying point for abolitionists. It
didn't just describe an act of violence—it codified a legal principle that stripped away any pretense of protection for enslaved people. Our class's reenactment didn't soften that reality; if anything, hearing the arguments spoken aloud, by people my own age, made the case feel less like a distant historical footnote and more like a warning about how easily law can be bent to rationalize cruelty when a system depends on it.

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used to create this blog post. For the blog, I was assigned to take note on a mock trial of the State vs. Mann Supreme Court Case. I then took those notes and copied and pasted them into Claude AI and asked it to create a blog post from my notes and the history of the State vs. Mann case. I then took the blog it created and copied it into blogger.com. I read through the blog it created and fixed some of the information it wrote about. Lastly I added pictures to the blog post.