Most obviously, this film is about racial prejudice: The white cops in Sparta, Mississippi, misjudge the intelligent black police officer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who happens to be in the wrong town at the wrong time. But there’s a lot more than just racial tension fueling the plot of In The Heat Of The Night. We find out really early in the film that Ralph, the diner counterman, dislikes the novice policeman Sam for some reason (and hides pie from him every night, which is pretty funny). Delores has an aversion to the sultry Southern summer evenings, but loves to parade around in the buff, which causes everyone problems. Her brother Purdy hates anyone who might get his teenage sister pregnant. Gillespie dreads being alone when he goes home. The mayor abhors drama. And, oh yeah, basically all of these people are racists, at least at the beginning of the film when Virgil Tibbs (MR. Tibbs) is just one more young black man they derogatorily refer to as “boy.”

However, Virgil surprises many of the residents of Sparta. He is clever, resourceful, and determined to bring Mr. Colbert’s killer to justice. But as Gillespie points out, Virgil is also a racist. The biggest draw for Virgil to continue investigating Mr. Colbert’s murder is that he can “stick it to” the white cops who can’t solve the crime without him—that, and he’s pretty sure the aristocratic, white cotton company owner, Endicott (the man who believes he’s still running a Southern plantation), is the murderer. Virgil can hardly wait to ruin that old jerk who still has black people hand-picking cotton for him and serving his guests lemonade. Yet just like the white Southerners (spoiler alert!), Virgil is mistaken in his racial profiling. Endicott is innocent—at least of Mr. Colbert’s murder.

Virgil and Gillespie, the distance between them notable.

For all the tension and racially provoked violence of In the Heat of the Night, the most brutal incident in the film, the murder of Mr. Colbert, occurs before the film opens and isn’t even motivated by prejudice—nope, just by good old greed and the drive to cover up another wrong that’s been committed. I won’t get too specific here since that would take away from the “whodunit” premise of the film! Suffice it to say, the film makes an excellent point about race by veering away from using race as a motivating factor in the story’s main crime. Strip humanity down to its core—take away all the outer indicators of race, sex, economic or social status, etc.—and we see that all people are essentially the same in their motivations. How many characters fall prey to lust in the film? And how quickly does lust lead to the necessity of lies and/or crime to conceal earlier wrongdoing? It doesn’t matter if someone is white or black, educated or not, rich or poor. We all do things we know are wrong; and when shame or fear take hold of us, our inhibitions to do wrong oftentimes decrease, and evil spirals out of control.

For Me Then…

I find it interesting that of all places Virgil is from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. In the Heat of the Night features kind of a brotherly love between Delores and Purdy, but their love for each other is colored with suspicion, bitterness, and jealousy. (Spoiler alert!) While we do end up seeing a positive relationship between “brother” policemen, one white and one black, the geographical distance between them (which they both repeatedly emphasize) gives rise to another truth the movie promotes: Since the murder has nothing to do with race and everyone in the film is bigoted in some way, it becomes clear that racism isn’t limited geographically. It’s pervasive, living within people’s hearts. We can make laws, participate in demonstrations, and so on, but these are all outer attempts at a cure for an internal problem. Racism will endure until people allow God to change their hearts.

Virgil and Gillespie, not so very different after all.