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.