Sidney Poitier died on January 6, 2022. His slap of a white man in the 1967 Oscar winning film In the Heat of the Night made a big impression on a 17 year old white kid who was just opening up to the world’s possibilities. The 2022 Academy Award show will always have Will Smith and Chris Rock. I have Virgil Tibbs and Eric Endicott, the 1968 Oscars, and a handshake.

Last fall I taught Romanian students about America democracy, from the perceptive of the black freedom movement. The students watched Spike Lee’s Malcom X and BlackkKlansman, Ava Duvernay’s Selma, Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave and the two scenes from Heat I will describe.* These scenes, with some context, helped students understand America. They portrayed an America that has struggled, still struggles, to become a better home for its African-American citizens.

The slap

“Got a name, boy,” barks Sparta, Mississippi Sheriff Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) at Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), to jump start the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night. Tibbs had been arrested by a deputy who earlier in the evening found the body of an important businessman. Searching for suspects, the deputy encountered Tibbs who was sitting in a train station waiting to return to Philadelphia, PA after visiting his mother.

In his decaying office, Gillespie grilled Tibbs who eventually produced a homicide detective badge tucked inside his wallet. Tibbs called his police chief who ordered him to help with the investigation. The chief told Gillespie that Virgil was his best detective. This sets in motion Heat’s plot. In a small 1960s Mississippi town Poitier’s black Tibbs worked with Steiger’s white Gillespie to solve a murder.

The murder victim was Philip Colbert who wanted to build a factory in Sparta. Tibbs asked locals whether Colbert had enemies. One pointed him to Eric Endicott, owner of Endicott Cotton Planation. He said Endicott believed his company would lose workers, black workers, to Colbert’s new enterprise. Gillespie and Tibbs visited Endicott on his property by driving through a cotton field of black field workers. They found Endicott inside a greenhouse tending his precious orchids.

“What’s your favorite flower?” Endicott asked Tibbs. “Epiphytics” said Tibbs and explained why. Endicott responded with this flower needed special care “because, like the negro, they need care and feedin’ and cultivation,’ and that takes time. That’s something’ you can’t make some people understand. That’s somethin’ Mr. Colbert didn’t realize.”

Earlier in the film Tibbs observed a root substance on the brake pedal of Colbert’s car. So he asked Endicott whether Mr. Colbert was in this greenhouse last night. Endicott was offended at Tibbs’ impertinent question and slapped him across the face. Tibbs reciprocated with a backhanded slap.

When Gillespie did nothing, Endicott told Tibbs “there was a time I could have had you shot.” I have been awed by the power of Poitier’s reciprocal slap. Not only the physical act. But the assertion of equivalence, the momentary dismantling of a racial hierarchy. Look at Endicott’s expression after the slap.

Larry Gates, the actor who plays Eric Endicott, gave the viewer a visceral portrayal of what the Endicotts’ of America were beginning to lose and what the Tibbs’ of America were starting to gain 50 years ago. Losers, however, often strike back.

The 1968 Oscars

On Thursday, April 4, 1968 James Earl Ray murdered Martin Luther King jr. The 1968 Academy Award Show was scheduled for Monday, April 8. On Saturday, April 6, Gregory Peck, President of the Motion Pictures Association, decided to postpone the Oscar ceremony until April 10, one day after King’s funeral. Bob Hope, emceeing his 17th Oscars, quipped to the audience about the postponement that “it didn’t affect me, but it’s been tough on the nominees,” and “any delay really snarls up programming.”**

On April 10, In the Heat of the Night won best picture and Rod Steiger best actor for his portrayal of Sheriff Bill Gillespie. In his acceptance speech, Steiger says: “I would like to thank Mr. Sidney Poitier for the pleasure of his friendship, which gave me the knowledge and understanding of prejudice in order to enhance this performance. Thank you and we shall overcome.”

As the audience applauds Steiger, Bob Hope returned and introduced Sidney Poitier who will present the next award. In Pictures at a Revolution, Mark Harris described the moment: “Poitier’s appearance immediately after Steiger’s victory gave the night its emotional climax. Waves of applause, whistles, cheers, and bravos greeted him as he walked to the center of the stage.”

The handshake

In the Heat of the Night was the film that most helps me makes sense of the America of my lifetime. The slap scene represented a changing of the guard. Those who have been pushed aside were beginning to assert themselves. The Civil Rights movement was the nonviolent and political version of this thrust. Gillespie, Hope and James Earl Ray were losing their grip on the country. Loss was hard. Gillespie responded with learned prejudice, Hope with lame quips, and Ray with a bullet.

In the film’s final scene, Gillespie carried Tibbs’ suitcase from the squad car to the train and in parting says to Virgil “take care, you hear.” Virgil turns, smiles, and says “yeah.” In between these vignettes was a handshake.

I am not naive about America. Every forward movement toward extending the Constitution’s blessings of liberty to all has been met with fierce resistance. Those losing power never give it up easily. After Tibbs’ slap, Endicott will send his thugs after Virgil. Even the 1966 filming of Heat butted up against the reality of racism in 1960s America.*** Poitier said he would not go “south of the Mason-Dixon Line” because of an incident with the Klan he and Harry Belafonte had a year earlier in Mississippi.

So Sparta, Illinois became Sparta, Mississippi. The Endicott plantation scene, however, required two days in Dyersville, Tennessee. Poitier, Steiger and a small crew had to stay at a Holiday Inn outside of Dyersville because the main hotel was “whites only.”

That “whites only” America was a different country. Gillespie changed just as America has changed. That handshake was a sign of hope, of the change to come. Smith’s Oscar slap down of Rock was remarkable. What was not remarkable was the presence of two black men on the Oscar stage. Or the Oscar winning film Coda about three deaf members of a family, each played by a deaf actor. Or the remake of another Oscar nominated film, West Side Story, where all the Latino parts are played by Latinos and not, like the 1961 original, white actors in brown face.

For my Romanian students, I used the black freedom movement as a lens through which to see America because I wanted them to see the struggle, for democracy-in-action and not just in words.

Struggle was defined by loss and hope, the slap and the handshake.

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*In a future blog, I will write about the course I taught in Romania.

**From Mark Harris’ Pictures at a Revolution

***From Norman Jewison & Steven Galloway “In the Heat of the Night at 50,” The Hollywood Reporter, April 5, 2017