In The Heat of The Night (Reaction)

 

Cheif Gillespie looking at Police Officer Tibbs in "In the Heat of the Night."

In class, we watched "In the Heat of The Night" which is a movie about a black police officer who gets stuck in Sparta Mississippi and helps solve the murder of Colbert - a very well-known man in Sparta. 

One aspect of this movie that caught my attention was the relationship between Tibbs and Gillespie. Their relationship evolves over the course of the movie becoming something quite rare during this time period in the South. 

In the beginning, Tibbs is introduced as the suspect of Mr. Colberts murder - but it is quickly revealed that he is a police officer in Philadelphia. Not only is he a police officer but Tibbs was referred as his chiefs "best homicide officer." 

Police Chief Gillespie is stubborn about letting Tibbs help in the beginning but after realizing what he is capable of - he starts to change his mind. 

In the beginning, Gillespie acts as if he doesn't need the help, that they had so easily found the suspect. 

Tibbs easily proves him wrong and this is when I saw Gillespie start to act differently towards him. 

Colberts wife said she wanted Tibbs on this case and that there was not any other option. 

Tibbs wanted to leave but Gillespie came back to find him at the train station. 

I think Gillespie knew they needed Tibbs to solve this case no matter what - despite what the people of Sparta may have thought about Tibbs being there. 

The evolving we see throughout the movie is consistent - from both Gillespie and Tibbs. 

I think the entire reason this case was able to be solved in the first place was based on the trust these two had for each other in the first place.

Tibbs could have easily walked away and left Sparta, but he didn't. 

We see throughout this movie that Gillespie did his best to make sure that Tibbs was treated with the most respect possible. 

For example, in the beginning when he took Tibbs to see Colbert and examine him he said "You better give this man anything he asks for" because Gillespie trusted Tibbs to get the job done - despite the views people in the South had on people of color at this time. 

Another moment I saw their relationship evolve was on Tibbs last night in Sparta and the two men were sitting together in Gillespie's house. 

This was not something you would ever see during this era. Two men, one white and one black, sitting together in a white man's home. 

So, to answer this question: "In what ways did their relationship reflect the changes in the broader society that were under way at that time?" 

I would say their relationship reflects the harmony between the two races that was lacking in the majority of America at this time - which would come long past when it should have. 

I continuously noted throughout this movie that Gillespie was the one character throughout this movie that trusted Tibbs despite his skin color. 

Tibbs also was different from others like him. It was not normal for colored people to be police officers or to wear a suit and tie. 

He was the representation of why colored citizens also needed to be respected because like Tibbs, they were doing things a lot of white people could not accomplish themselves at the time. 

This is the exact reason the relationship between Gillespie and Tibbs was special, because I think Gillespie saw and also represented what the broader society that was to come. 

Mock Trial Reaction Post

A white man stopping black citizens from boarding a train car

Two Sides of Plessy v. Ferguson

My classmates presented both sides of Plessy v. Ferguson. Here is what each argued.

Defending Homer Plessy

Homer Plessy could “pass” and live in white society. He bought a first-class ticket for a white car illegally and was fined under the Separate Car Act. His side asked: does this violate his rights under the 14th Amendment?

They argued the Constitution should not play into a citizen’s legal rights because of race. Plessy was not drunk or disorderly; he simply was there and faced consequences for it.

  Justice Harlan said, “Our constitution is colorblind.” They also cited the Declaration of Independence, “All men are created equal,” and said the country has not been living up to it.

Citizens who purchase tickets and obey the laws have a right to equal service, and Plessy paid an equal fare for an equal seat.

Segregation, they said, is unjust and unconstitutional, and bad for the community. It teaches children racism; do we want children to grow up this way? 

It also has costs that affect the entire nation: separation causes unnecessary confusion, may leave valuable seating unused, harms workers and users, and risks businesses losing supporters and customers.

Louisiana passed the law and had the choice, so they should follow it, and a law is not wrong just because someone dislikes it.

Defending Ferguson

The Separate Car Act does not treat people differently: they are separated but treated equal. Louisiana did not invent separation; it happens everywhere.

The 13th and 14th Amendments did not command mingling of races and social life, and they do not reach private, social distinctions. 

The 13th abolished slavery, nothing more, and the 14th makes people equal only by law, not through social mingling. The Congress that drafted the 14th knew of the rulings and left it anyway.

To honor order is not hatred; it’s humility. Inferiority lies not in the act, only in the meaning itself. 

No society has ever existed without some form of social expectations, and separate institutions have existed for generations. Whether someone approves is not the issue here. Law cannot overcome social customs by decree.

________________________________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used to form this blog post from my own notes that I took while listening to my classmates give a mock trial presentation on the Plessy v. Ferguson case. I asked Claude AI to give only add embedded links to reliable sources related to the topic. AI did not add or change any information above.  

Reconstruction Era Documentary

 

A photo showing a ruined city street, lined with ruined buildings and debris.

Reconstruction was a devastating time period, and its collapse still affects us today. The achievements of this era led to devastating events, because Southerners could not grasp the concept of Black and white people living and functioning together. A hundred years after emancipation, Black people were still fighting for their rights.

A Moment of Freedom

When news rippled out from the village of Appomattox, Black people were free. 

Slaves themselves helped make this happen. Some were caught by the army, some defied their owners, and African Americans joined the military.

The prayers of generations were being answered. 

Families torn apart began reconnecting, placing ads in newspapers.

Still, the end of the Civil War brought more questions than answers. 

What does freedom mean?

Competing Visions

Reconstruction simply meant restoring the rebel states to the Union, but North and South saw it differently.

Two days after Appomattox, Lincoln spoke about Black men being intelligent and deserving of jobs. Hours after his death, Andrew Johnson was elected.

Johnson believed the planter class was at fault and that poor white Southerners were the victims. Frederick Douglass said, “He is no friend of the Black.”

The basis of being truly free was owning land. The Freedmen’s Bureau, which was about treating Black people fairly, had a small budget but plenty of land. 

Meanwhile, the wealthy came to Johnson for pardons, and he said he’d keep the population “under control.” The United States had the opportunity to make amends, but the country failed. 

Fighting Back

The Black Codes forced Black people to sign labor contracts, creating as little change from slavery to freedom as possible. Children were taken from Black families because their parents “cannot take care of them,” and parents had no say.

The Ku Klux Klan was created to “keep them in check.” In Memphis, white men hunted down and killed Black people on sight.

Congress Takes Control

Congress took control of Reconstruction without calling a single Southerner. The 14th Amendment declared that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen and that no state can deny any person due process.

No state would ratify it, so military reconstruction divided the South into five districts. Rebel states had to adopt new constitutions and ratify the amendment.

_________________________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE: Claude AI was used in a limited way to only organize my notes into a short blog post. I told the AI to not add any new information and to make the blog post with only the information I gave it from my notes in class. 

EOTO: Positive Outlook

 

Abraham Lincoln is signing the 13th Amendment while others watch. 

In 1865, America faced a question few nations ever have to answer: what does freedom look like after a war fought over slavery? 

Within five years, the country responded by rewriting its Constitution three times. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments carried a hopeful vision that the nation could finally live up to its own ideals.

Freedom: The 13th Amendment 

Ratified on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States. That mattered because the Emancipation Proclamation, for all its power, had limits. 

According to the National Archives, Lincoln recognized that his proclamation depended on Union military victory, so a constitutional amendment was needed to secure abolition for good.

In other words, freedom stopped being a wartime measure and became permanent law.

Citizenship: The 14th Amendment

Three years later, the 14th Amendment answered the next question: free, but as what? 

It granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and required every state to honor due process and equal protection of the laws.

This directly overturned the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, which had declared in 1857 that enslaved people were not citizens. 

For the first time, the Constitution told the states that they could not simply take people’s rights away.

Power: The 15th Amendment

Ratified on February 3, 1870, the 15th Amendment declared that the right to vote could not be denied because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. 

The National Archives notes that to abolitionists and Radical Republicans, it appeared to be the fulfillment of every promise made to African Americans.

The results were visible almost immediately. 

On February 25, 1870, visitors in the gallery burst into applause as Hiram Revels of Mississippi entered the Senate chamber to take his oath as the first African American senator.

Across the South, Black men were elected to local, state, and federal offices. 

Drawing on historian Eric Foner’s research, Facing History and Ourselves documents roughly 1,500 Black officeholders during Reconstruction, and historians estimate the true number is closer to 2,000.

Their presence made a difference. 

An economic study summarized by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Black officials broadly agreed on land policy and public schools, and that places with more Black officeholders saw gains in Black literacy.

A Promise Worth Remembering 

The story did not end neatly. 

The National Archives acknowledges that the 15th Amendment was really just another step in a struggle for equality that lasted more than a century, with the Voting Rights Act of 1965 finally removing the remaining barriers to voting.

Yet that is part of what makes these amendments so powerful. They set standards in the nation’s highest law that later generations could point to and demand that America meet.

In just five years, Americans moved from freedom to citizenship to political power, and they proved that the Constitution can be changed to expand liberty. 

That is a hopeful legacy worth celebrating.

_______________________________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used heavily on this assignment. I put in a detailed prompt into Claude AI to write a 500-600 word blog post about the three, reconstruction era amendments. I asked AI to include embedded links to reliable sources. 

GONE WITH THE WIND (REACTION POST)

 

Scarlett O'Hara is sitting while two young men try to catch her attention

Let's talk about the characters of this film. 

Scarlett O'Hara, a young beautiful woman in the south, is the main character of the film. In my opinion, she is selfish, manipulative and has always gotten what she wants without any problem. 

Her entire identity is built around being the most desired woman in the community, and she flirts with every man in her sight despite not being interested in them whatsoever. 

There is only one man she wants: Ashley Wilkes. Scarlett cannot have Ashley, and Scarlett is not willing to let him go. 

Ashley gets married to another woman, and throughout the movie, it becomes more obvious that Scarlett likes Ashley for what he symbolizes not for who he actually is. 

There is one man in particular that seeks interest in Scarlett: Rhett Butler. 

He is an outsider from Charleston who is blunt and does not fit in with the normal crowd. 

In this film, he is the realist, while talking to the other men, he states blankly that there was no winning against the North - which made the others angry, but it was true. 

He actually did not believe in the cause at all - but he was making money from it, and he got involved. 

I think the reason Rhett finds himself drawn to Scarlett is because he can see himself in her, and he sees right through her helpless act. 

He goes to her and points out the facts and tells her what he sees - which is that she didn't need to pretend to be a lady, and that she can be independent, and most importantly, he tells her that her love for Ashley is a fantasy. 

Another character worth mentioning is Mammy, the enslaved house servant at the O'Hara household. 

Mammy was fierce and stern - she was not afraid to tell Scarlett how it really was. 

Similarly to Rhett, Mammy sees right through Scarlett, but she wants to keep the act convincing. 

She consistently scolds Scarlett and holds her own throughout the film, and she is one of the most vivid characters in the entirety of the film. 

Each of these characters show hidden meaning within the film - and send important messages to the viewer.

In my eyes, Scarlett represents the South itself. We see her suffering, her hunger, and the loss of her home - much like what the entirety of the south is going through. 

To the viewer this brings the emotional aspect of the movie - and it puts the perspective of the damage the war caused for the South

While Scarlett chooses to rebel, her rebellion still has its limits. She tends to break social expectations, but what she wants still correlates with what society expects: money, status and a husband). 

She still represents rebellion in some way but not in a way that challenges society. 

Through Rhett, I noticed that the film was critiquing Southern arrogance, not the society itself. The Southerners had a lot of pride, but Rhett was brave enough to challenge them knowing they will lose but he never said it was wrong, so the morality aspect is still unchallenged. 

EOTO Presentations reaction post

 

A historical painting that depicts America in the 19th century. 

Our class recently presented on different events that shaped the fight against slavery and for equal rights in 19th-century America. Together, they tell a story of resistance, backlash, and the slow, painful march toward civil war.

One of the earliest turning points was the Amistad uprising, led by Joseph Cinqué, a group of Africans who seized their slave ship rather than accept bondage. 

Their case reached the Supreme Court, where former president John Quincy Adams argued for their freedom and won, giving the abolitionist movement a powerful symbol of resistance.

 Fighting on a ship during the Amistad uprising 

Organized abolitionism grew through groups like the American Anti-Slavery Society, which used speeches, newspapers, and petitions to demand immediate emancipation. 

Frederick Douglass became one of its most influential voices, helping push slavery into the national spotlight despite fierce opposition.

Literature played its own role. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, written partly in response to the Fugitive Slave Act, became a massive bestseller that energized the North and was banned in parts of the South, deepening the sectional divide.

Reform wasn't limited to slavery. In 1848, roughly 300 people gathered at the Seneca Falls Convention, where attendees passed eleven resolutions on women's rights, including the contentious demand for suffrage.

After the war, education became a tool of empowerment. 

Booker T. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute in 1881 with just 30 students and no building, emphasizing vocational skills; it endures today as Tuskegee University.

Tuskegee University in 1881

Tensions also turned violent. Years of bloodshed in "Bleeding Kansas" and the harsh Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled ordinary citizens to help capture escapees, set the stage for John Brown's 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, an armed attempt to spark a slave uprising that ended in his capture and execution.

These tensions finally erupted after Lincoln's 1860 election, when Southern states seceded and formed the Confederacy. 

On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter, officially starting the Civil War.

Taken together, these presentations show how individual acts of courage and resistance built toward the larger reckoning of the Civil War.

______________________________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE: AI was used in a limited way to only organize my notes that I took in class while listening and watching other student's presentations. Claude AI was used to put my information into the form of a blog post - while also providing reliable sources to find more information on the topic. In the prompt I included phrases like "use my notes", "add reliable sources" and "form an organized post" for the best possible outcome. 

Town Hall Speech

The Appeal I Could Not Take Back

Black and White Photograph of Lydia Maria Child reading a novel. 

My name is Lydia Maria Child. I earned my bread by my pen before most people believed a woman could. I wrote novels, I founded the first children's magazine this country had ever seen, and I wrote a housekeeping guide for women who kept no servants and had little money to spare. By 1830 I was, by the standards of the day, a success. You can read more about that early career at the David Ruggles Center.

Then, in 1833, I published a book against slavery, and I lost nearly all of it.

What the Appeal Cost Me

The book was called An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, and I spent three years reading and thinking before I wrote a word of it. I knew precisely what I risked. Within a year, my children's magazine had lost its subscribers and I resigned. My other books went out of print. The parlors of Boston that had welcomed me were closed to me.

Novel written by Lydia Maria Child

The National Abolition Hall of Fame has documented just how completely I was cast out by people I had once called friends. I opened that book with a plea to my reader: "I beseech you not to throw down this volume as soon as you have glanced at the title."

I ask the same of anyone reading this now. The full text survives at the Library of Congress for anyone who wishes to judge it firsthand.

An American Sin, not a Southern One

I have never let the North console itself. Our ships carried the trade. Our mills spin the cotton grown by enslaved hands.

A man who profits from a crime he did not personally commit still profits from a crime, and I said so plainly, which is a large part of why I was punished for saying it.

I am often told that patience is wiser than immediate emancipation — that the institution will wither on its own, given time. It has not withered in two hundred years, and every year of patience is somebody's entire lifetime.

I am told, too, that the enslaved must first be prepared for freedom. But you cannot teach a man to swim by keeping him from the water. Freedom is the only school in which freedom is learned. Nor will I accept the argument that enslavers deserve compensation for their loss. One does not pay a thief to return what was never rightfully his.

Portrait of Lydia Maria Child

What Bondage Does to the Free

Slavery does not only wound the enslaved, it corrupts the household that holds the whip. Absolute power over another human being is a poison that no one drinks and remains untouched by it. And it breaks the one thing nearly everyone claims to hold sacred: the family.

A mother is sold away from her children between one morning and the next.

A marriage between two enslaved people has no standing in law, because the law does not recognize that a piece of property can marry. I ask any reader to sit with that for the length of a single breath before claiming neutrality is possible.

What I Still Ask

I lost my livelihood and my friendships for this cause, and I have never once regretted the choice — only that I did not make it sooner.

I do not ask anyone to be brave. I ask only for honesty, first in private, about what is already known to be true, and then the courage to say it aloud, in public, where it costs something.

___________________________________________________________________________

AI DISCLOSURE: Claude AI was used to build and form this presentation/blog post. Terms like "I am a college student participating in a town hall presentation" and "Please include reliable sources" were included in the prompt. This writer went through and checked, changed and revised all information above.