a tight screenplay. The brilliant Norman
Jewison took the directorial helm. Ray Charles
sang the song with the help of Quincy Jones.
And finally, Poitier, Steiger, Lee Grant and oth-
ers took the stage. What came into focus was
pain: the pain of racism born of the atrocity
of slavery; the pain of lust bottled up by jealous
love; the pain of poverty lathered across the
land like plague; the pain of loneliness and
alienation in the hot Mississippi night. This
play of pain was unique when it appeared
on American movie screens, but its underly-
ing truths would resonate in any age when
there is inequality, poverty and hatred based
on greed and its attendant lies.
I use the words stage and play because the
dramatic interaction of the characters is
very much like a well-crafted play. We see not
only the emotions but also the minds behind
those urges. The white world and the black are
not shown as monoliths. Each person has his
or her character formed under the pressure
of history. Just the notion of presenting black
men and women fleshed out as three-dimen-
sional in a mainstream film was revolutionary
at the time. There is violence, of course, but
this movie is about the passion, not the por-
nography, of pain. Lives are on the line, but,From left: Steiger,
Jester Hairston and
Poitier in a scene from
the movie, which was
shot in Sparta, Illinois,
despite being set
in Sparta, Mississippi,
because Poitier refused
to work in the South.↓ From left: Poitier,
Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee
member Bernard Lee
and Harry Belafonte at
a civil rights rally in
May 1960. Poitier and
Belafonte were among
Hollywood’s biggest
financial supporters of
SNCC, even traveling to
Mississippi for Freedom
Summer in 1964.Grant played the murdered man’s widow, Mrs. Colbert. →more importantly, the fate of our nation’s soul
also hangs in the balance.
Taking all of this into account, it’s easy to
talk about the relevance of the two most dra-
matic and telling scenes. The first is between
Gillespie and Tibbs. The grizzled, gum-
chewing police chief quickly gets frustrated
with the arrogant boy from up north. Unable
to restrain himself, the cop asks Tibbs what
it is they call him. “They call me Mr. Tibbs!”
Virgil retorts. This declaration is the heart
of self-emancipation for black men, women
and children from any age in America. It is
a human being laying claim to all the rights of
citizenship. He will not be insulted by igno-
rance, delusion or racism. He will speak truth
not only to power but also to and for himself.
This is the moment, whenever it occurs, when
freedom becomes a reality for black folk. No
bearded white man can grant our liberation;
we must know it as well as we know the love
of our children or the brilliance of the sun ris-
ing up against the darkness of night. I think I
had a glimmer of this truth when I watched the
movie in ’67, but the message was a little too
sophisticated for me to understand back then.
The second scene is more physical. People
call it “the slap,” but it is much more thana movie produced on a shoestring budget, a
movie written and directed by white men,
speak meaningfully to the depths of the black
experience in this sophisticated modern age?
I did my due diligence. I watched the
movie again. This was a singular experience;
slowly I was borne down into the fevered
nightmare that I and the whole nation had
experienced half a century before. Poitier’s
Virgil Tibbs was a proud black man who said
things like “Keep cool” and “Ya dig?” This
Southern-born, Northern transplant was tall,
articulate and beautiful in an impeccable suit.
At times he was desperate, but never truly
afraid. He was so cool under duress because he
knew what was right, and that knowledge gave
him certainty.
Rod Steiger’s Bill Gillespie was the sheriff.
He was a redneck but an outsider to Sparta,
Mississippi. Gillespie had enough of a modern
mind to be able to tell that the insufferable
black detective, lately of Philadelphia, was the
only one who could solve the crime.
Together this unlikely duo went up against
the superstitious prejudices of the South,
putting lives and livelihoods on the line. In
the end, both discovered that their prejudices
blinded them to truth. But they were woke
enough to face their shortcomings and see the
right answers for them and their peoples.
Along the way, we are exposed to a world
that was like prison for most poor whites
and an entire population of the descendants
of slaves. The night is filled with darkness,
despair and desire. Poverty was the negative
space that defined most people’s lives. The
backstory is that a white man has come from
up north to build a factory that will take
the place of the cotton fields and bring some
modicum of relief to the poverty-stricken
Sparta. The white man is murdered, and that
one ray of hope may very well disappear if the
murderer is not found.
This belief in the North as the savior of the
South in general, and of black people specifi-
cally, is a fallacy. Racism pervades the entire
U.S.; it always has. Northerners like to believe
that they never bought and sold living beings
as if they were livestock, that they didn’t fab-
ricate clothes for sale made from slave-labor
cotton. When the U.S. ordered desegregation,
that bastion of Northern liberal sensibili-
ties, Boston, came out with bats, knives and
guns. I can’t blame a 51-year-old movie for
not understanding a concept that many today
still cannot comprehend.
In the Heat of the Night was the creation
of an extraordinary confluence of talent.
Under the watch of United Artists, Stirling
Silliphant adapted John Ball’s novel into
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 176 FEBRUARY 28, 2018