Heat of night reflection

A Story of Race, Resilience and Justice

When I found out we were watching In the Heat of the Night in class, I was excited purely because I love murder mysteries. I expected to enjoy the suspense, the clues and the detective work. But the movie quickly showed me that it was about so much more than just solving a murder. What really made this film powerful was how honestly it reflected the struggles of Black people living under Jim Crow how they had to fight for every right, every ounce of respect and every chance to prove themselves in a society that constantly doubted them. The film doesn’t dramatize these struggles instead, it places them quietly and uncomfortably into nearly every scene, making the story feel incredibly real.

A Daily Reality of the Jim Crow Era

The Jim Crow Era Through Tibbs Eyes

The film follows Virgil Tibbs a Black homicide detective from Philadelphia who becomes involved in a murder investigation in a small Mississippi town after being wrongfully arrested at the train station. This moment showed me immediately how deeply racism was ingrained Tibbs didn’t do anything suspicious, yet his skin colour alone was enough to make him a suspect.

Even after Tibbs is identified as a detective, the officers hesitate to believe him. What stood out to me most was how he handled it. Instead of being reactive, he stays composed and intelligent, using his expertise to gain respect in a town determined not to give it to him. Throughout the film, Tibbs has to be more accurate, more professional and more controlled than anyone else simply to be treated as human. To me, this reflects exactly what Black Americans faced at the time: the pressure to be “perfect” just to survive.

Tibbs and Gillespie: A Slow Shift Toward Respect

Tibbs Standing His Ground

One of the strongest parts of the film is the evolving relationship between Tibbs and Police Chief Gillespie. At the beginning, Gillespie treats Tibbs with open prejudice. He doubts him, talks down to him and even seems threatened by his intelligence. But as Tibbs continues to prove himself solving clues the local officers overlook and exposing mistakes in the investigation Gillespie begins to change.

It’s not a dramatic transformation, but a gradual recognition that Tibbs is not just capable but essential. I appreciated how realistic this shift felt. Gillespie doesn’t suddenly stop being biased he just learns, slowly, to respect Tibbs based on who he is, not what he looks like. For the time period, even this small shift symbolised progress proof that change however slow, was possible.

The Portrayal of Women in the Film

While the main storyline focuses on race, the movie also highlights how women in the 1960s faced their own forms of inequality. Each female character reveals a different place within the social hierarchy, yet all share the common experience of being limited by gender.

Mrs. Colbert: Power Without Autonomy

Mrs. Leslie Colbert

Mrs. Colbert, wealthy and white, appears at first glance to be the most powerful woman in the film but watching her, I realised how misleading that image really is. Even with her social standing, she has almost no control over what happens after her husband’s death. She isn’t allowed to participate in the investigation and she can’t demand justice directly. Instead, she relies on her financial influence to keep Tibbs on the case. To me, this really highlighted how even the most privileged women in the 1960s lived within strict limits. Mrs. Colbert may look strong from the outside, but her power is entirely dependent on how much the men around her are willing to listen. I found myself frustrated for her, because she clearly wanted answers yet had to fight for them in such an indirect way.

Delores Purdy

Delores represents the complete opposite of Mrs. Colbert and I found her storyline the most unsettling. She is poor, unprotected, and constantly judged by the people around her. The way the men view her as someone sexual and disposable made me uncomfortable, because it showed how little value was placed on women who didn’t fit society’s expectations. I couldn’t help but feel sympathy for her. She didn’t have the luxury of choice everything she did seemed tied to basic survival. And when she became tangled in the investigation, instead of receiving support, she was treated like a problem or a distraction. Watching her made me realise how deeply class and gender could trap a woman, even when she was technically “privileged” by race. Her vulnerability didn’t give her freedom it made her a target.

Mama Caleba

Mama Caleba Quiet Strength in a Hostile World

Mama Caleba was the woman who stuck with me the most. Even though her screen time was short, her presence felt incredibly strong. As a Black woman in the Jim Crow South, she faced both racial and gender discrimination, which should have made her nearly powerless but somehow she carries herself with more authority than almost anyone else in the film. I admired her immediately. She runs a business, commands respect and navigates every interaction with a quiet intelligence that only comes from fighting through a lifetime of obstacles.

What impressed me most was how she interacts with Tibbs. She doesn’t see him as a threat or an outsiders he sees him as someone worth helping, but on her own terms. I felt like she represented a type of strength the film doesn’t show anywhere else. The strength of someone who has survived without protection from society, without status and without privilege. Her character reminded me how much resilience black women needed just to exist in that era and I found myself wishing the film showed even more of her story.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I think In the Heat of the Night did a phenomenal job portraying the struggles that Black people faced and the constant fight they endured for even basic rights. It also shed light on how women regardless of race were limited in different but very real ways. Even though the film is historical, it never felt slow or boring. The tension the evolving relationships and the underlying social commentary kept me engaged the whole time.

Presentation reflection, What I learned

 

Understanding the Complexity of Reconstruction

Over the past few classes, my understanding of the Reconstruction Era and the long fight for racial equality has deepened in ways I didn’t expect. I always knew the basic timeline slavery ends and almost a century later the Civil Rights Movement takes shape but I didn’t realize how much struggle filled the years in between. Listening to my classmates’ presentations and examining these stories showed me that progress in America has never been straightforward. It has always been a constant push and pull between change and resistance.

Union vs. Confederacy Clash

Legal Freedom vs. Real Freedom

One of the biggest lessons I learned was that “freedom” after the Civil War wasn’t immediate or guaranteed. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were monumental, but they didn’t instantly transform people’s lives. That’s why the Freedmen’s Bureau became such an important symbol. It didn’t just pass laws it provided schools, reunited families, offered legal support and gave newly freed people the chance to build stable lives.

The story of “40 acres and a mule” especially struck me. Even though the government later broke the promise, those brief months when Black families actually lived on that land showed what equality could have looked like if real opportunities had been provided.

Portrait of Carver an Influential Agricultural Scientist

Leadership, Resilience, and Progress

 I was also inspired by the leaders who helped create   progress despite barriers. The Tuskegee Institute stood   out to me as a powerful example students building the school themselves, George Washington Carver  transforming agriculture and later the Tuskegee Airmen breaking military boundaries. These stories made the   era feel personal, not just historical.

The Harsh Reality of Anti-Miscegenation Laws

Interracial Couple Challenging Marriage Laws

Learning about Anti-Miscegenation Laws shocked me the most. The idea that interracial marriage was illegal until 1967 showed just how deeply racism controlled people’s personal lives. The Loving v. Virginia case demonstrated how an ordinary couple Mildred and Richard Loving changed the entire nation simply by defending their right to love one another. Even after the ruling, some states dragged their feet for decades.

Final Takeaway

What I’ve learned is that Reconstruction wasn’t just a period it set the stage for every civil rights struggle that followed. It taught me that real progress needs laws, resources, courage and consistent resistance to injustice.

Ai disclosure, I used Chat GBT to use my notes to make a blog post, however I edited so that it better reflected my ideas and the things that I wanted to say in the blog post. I made sure that I also used a format that would make it in a college freshman style.

Video reflection part 2

 

Booker T. Washington’s Story Hit Me Hard

Watching the videos in class today made me realize how much of history I’ve learned without ever truly feeling it. The video about Booker T. Washington honestly hit me the hardest. Imagining someone walking over 200 miles at sixteen just for the chance to sweep floors so he could afford school made me rethink how I view my own education. I complain about studying sometimes, but he fought for every bit of it. When he built Tuskegee Institute at only twenty-five, teaching practical skills and self-reliance, I couldn’t help but admire the way he turned struggle into opportunity. Knowing he was the first Black guest to dine at the White House made me realize how symbolic his journey really was.

Lincoln’s Death Changed Everything

Abraham Lincoln, 1865

I always knew Lincoln was assassinated, but I never understood how dramatic the impact was until now. Hearing that he wanted to give Black soldiers the right to vote made me respect him even more. But his death completely flipped the country in the wrong direction. Andrew Johnson, who took over, basically abandoned newly freed people. Returning land to white owners, allowing Black Codes, ignoring violence it made me angry to see how quickly hope was taken away. And learning that sharecropping, a system that kept people trapped in poverty, lasted into the 2000s shocked me. It made me realize freedom didn’t suddenly appear in 1865; people had to keep fighting for it.

Glimpses of Progress and How Fast It Was Taken Away

I didn’t know that during Reconstruction, Black Americans voted in huge numbers and even held political office. Hearing that made me think about what the country could have looked like if that progress had been allowed to continue. But Jim Crow laws wiped out those gains almost overnight. It was frustrating to watch that part of the video because it felt like hope was constantly being built just to be torn down again.

On the road to a new life

The Great Migration Felt Personal

The Great Migration made me think about what I would do if my only option for dignity was to leave everything I knew behind. Millions of Black Americans did exactly that. They chased fairness, opportunity, and safety things most of us take for granted. Their courage honestly inspired me.

My Final Takeaway

Today reminded me that history isn’t just dates and names it’s people fighting for their lives. And understanding that makes me appreciate their resilience even more.

AI disclosure: I took notes from the videos we watched in class and then used AI to help me turn those notes into a clearer, more organised blog post. After that, I edited the writing myself, added my own thoughts and reactions, and included the sources and images on my own.

America in 1896

 

American Flag

Freedom on Paper, Control in Practice

When I look around at America in 1896, I see a country that prides itself on liberty. The Civil War ended 31 years ago, slavery was outlawed, and the Constitution now promises equality for all. On paper, it sounds like progress. But in my opinion, that promise feels hollow. I see that, especially here in the South, almost none of that freedom is being lived.

Sometimes I tell myself that America has moved forward but then when you look back through we see the truth: the old ways never really left.

A Black sharecropping family in the South, 1890s,
 free in name but still trapped in poverty and dependence.

Economic Reality: Slavery’s Afterlife

After the war, freed Black families were told they could work for themselves. In reality, most entered into sharecropping a system that kept them tied to white landowners through debt. A typical deal worked like this, a white landowner let a Black family farm a small piece of land. In return, that family had to hand over a large share of the crop at harvest. But the landowner also controlled the seeds, the tools and even the store where the family bought food all “on credit.”

When I learned about this system, I couldn’t help but feel that it was slavery dressed in new clothing. The books were always kept by the landowner and the debt was always higher than the crop was worth. Debt meant you couldn’t leave. This was called debt peonage or debt slavery and it trapped families year after year.

So yes, the chains were gone. But poverty, dependency and control stayed. A Black worker in 1896 might be “free” under the law, but he was still working to make the same white man rich.

In some places, it went even further. Black men were arrested for the smallest things vagrancy, talking back, or simply being in the wrong place and then leased out to private businesses as punishment. When I discovered the details of this “convict leasing” system, I was shocked. It was free labor for companies, brutal work for the men, and profit for the state. Historians rightly call it an extension of slavery.

Enslaved labourers harvesting
sugarcane on a Southern plantation

Violence and Terror: Policing “Order”

Another part of daily life, and one I can’t ignore, is fear. White mobs carry out lynchings kidnappings, torture, and public killings meant to remind the entire Black community of its place. Between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and the mid-1900s, more than 4,000 Black people were lynched in the South. Most killers were never punished, sheriffs looked away, juries refused to convict.

When I first read the reports from the Equal Justice Initiative, I felt sick. These were not secret crimes they were public events. People brought their families to watch. The goal wasn’t justice, it was control.

When a government refuses to protect its people, freedom is an illusion. It becomes survival under constant threat.

Voting Rights: Silencing Black Citizens

The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, said the right to vote could not be denied because of race. On paper, that sounded noble. But in practice, I’ve seen the South rewrite the rules to get around it.

Formerly enslaved people
in the post Civil War South,

States introduced poll taxes, literacy tests, and “grandfather clauses” clever tricks that blocked Black voters while keeping white voters safe. Illiterate whites could vote if their grandfathers had, but since enslaved people could never vote, Black men failed the test before it began.

When I looked into Mississippi’s constitution of 1890, I realised how openly it was designed to keep power in white hands. Other states quickly followed.

By 1896, I could see that most Black Southerners had lost the right to vote without a single law saying “no Black man may vote.” It was all done through paperwork, taxes, and fear.

Everyday Life: Separation and Control

Even outside politics, separation rules every part of life. Lawmakers have made it clear that Black and white citizens should not share schools, restaurants, train cars, or even hospitals. They say it’s to preserve “peace.” I say it’s to preserve power.

Everywhere, there were message written on signs and in laws: one race belongs above the other. Black children grow up believing they are second-class. White children grow up believing that’s the natural order.

AI disclosure: Parts of this assignment were developed with the assistance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. I used the tool to turn my script for my presentation into a 550 word minimum blog post. I also used it to help with organising historical information, improving clarity and grammar, and finding credible sources such as PBS, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the National Archives. All ideas were reviewed, edited, and finalised by me to ensure accuracy and originality. I added my opinion to every section to make it more of a personal blog.