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in the heat of the night
Adelina Liberato
January 4, 2014

In the Heat of the Night’s Racism

“Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.” as said by the author, Pierre Berton. As is shown In the Heat of the Night, it’s an academy awarded movie which was directed by Norman Jewison in 1967. The film shows us how big the racial prejudice by this part of the country was in the latest 60’s. As in this great movie In the Heat of the Night, the Unites States history is full of confronting races events, but has also a lot of brave people who struggled against racism, as the detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) one of the main character, did in the movie.
This movie drama was based in 1965; where we can be appreciate several examples of racism. As in the beginning of the film when Sergeant Sam Wood (Warren Oates) come at the train station and pick Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) up to the police office as a suspect of Mr. Colbert’s Assassination. Vigil was a black police detective from Philadelphia who was passing through this town to change trains after visiting his mother. Later at the police office, the Chief Bill Gillespie (Rod Steiger) assumed that Virgil was the causer to a murder just because he was a foreign black man and also had a significant amount of cash in his wallet.
The next example is when Chief Gillespi, s black man with lots of cash in his wallet. was involved in this murder

“Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.” as said by the author, Pierre Berton. As is shown In the Heat of the Night, which is an academy awarded movie, made in 1967. It shows us how big the racial prejudice by this part of the country was in the latest 60’s. As in this great movie In the Heat of the Night, the Unites States history is full of

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