The ’60s were a time of changing ideas about many social aspects of life, one of which being the treatment of minorities, especially African-Americans. Two of the movies addressing this changing climate were A Raisin in the Sun and In the Heat of the Night, both of which are Sidney Poitier-led films. In these films, the characters Poitier portrays can be thought of as two views of the black man during two periods in the ‘60s—the beginning of the ‘60s, when the Civil Rights Movement was just picking up steam and black people were still in their figurative shackles, and the latter half of the sixties, when the black man finally started gaining respect and positive treatment. Due to this drastic change, the black man was also able to reclaim his dignity and even throw digs at the white man while doing so.
A Raisin in the Sun (1961), originally a stage play written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, exhibits the general malaise many black families in the 1960s felt, regardless of status. Many black men felt, like Walter (Poitier) that the only thing they could give their children was the blind hope of doing better than them, even though they knew their children would be facing similar racism. Also, many black people might have felt like the hope they did give their children was feeble at best, when all the images surrounding their children dealt with well-to-do, “wholesome” white families, like Leave it to Beaver (1957-1963), The Andy Griffith Show (1960-1968), Gidget (1959), Doris Day movies, and the glamour of Grace Kelly, juxtaposed to the still-prominent images of Mammy-type housemaids and old black butlers or doormen.
Walter’s anxiety and restlessness with his life is indicative of that of other black men in the ‘60s, striving to be perceived as a man in a world that still perceived them as “boys”. He wants to make his own fortune, as so many others have done, because America advertises itself as the place where anything is possible. But, that dream was often afforded only to white people, not the run-of-the-mill descendants of slaves.
Walter’s life is also pre-Martin Luther King. King was just becoming a force in the social and political spheres, having become part of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, organized and participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955), the Albany Movement in Georgia (1961), and the Birmingham Campaign (1963). His influence was now being taken seriously by the national media; while black people always had pride about themselves, Martin Luther King represented someone they could readily believe in as proof that their worth was valid. Walter’s insistent hope of making it out of his ghetto is kept alive through the Civil Rights Movement, as evident in the victorious ending of the film, where Walter stands up to the leader of the middle-class white neighborhood the family moves into, declaring that he and his family are there to stay.
The character Poitier plays in the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night is almost like a second look at Walter, but in the form of Detective Virgil Tibbs who has come down to the fictional racist town of Sparta, Mississippi to visit his relative but ends up working with culturally ignorant cops like Gillespie (Rod Steiger) to solve a murder. Whereas Walter was clinging onto the worth of his cultural identity for dear life, Virgil has fully reclaimed his identity and surpassing the cultural stereotypes to become a socially and culturally enlightened citizen.
Virgil’s reclaiming of his manhood and black heritage is a theme that can be seen in other movies in the late ‘60s and early-to-mid‘70s, especially in the development of blaxploitation films. Films like Shaft (1971) and Super Fly (1973) concern black protagonists (usually male, except in the case of Pam Grier-led Coffy (1973) and other Grier vehicles), and the main themes in these films concern the black protagonist eliminating crime in their neighborhood and fighting The Man (usually a white businessman who is a part of the corrupt, old-school American establishment or a contemporary African-American crime boss who is holding the black race down). In these films, the black protagonist is empowered by their heritage, not degraded because of it, and all who disagree with their empowerment are smote. Even sci-fi film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) used the blaxploitation element in their storytelling by casting Caesar (Roddy McDowall) in the Shaft role because of his involvement in helping his fellow enslaved apes reclaim their status and heritage and rise up against their white masters.
While the positive influence Sidney Poitier had on black America helped the blaxploitation genre grow, a particular scene in In the Heat of the Night probably jumpstarted the genre—the scene when Gillespie and Virgil are questioning the richest man in Sparta, Endicott (Larry Gates). Endicott lives just like his forefathers did, in the Big House with black workers both in the field picking cotton and serving him indoors. When Virgil questions Endicott about his love of plants, Endicott, in front of his old black butler (or his house slave, as Endicott probably thought of him as), says that like the black man, flowers need to be cultivated by nurturing hands—white hands—in order to become the best they can possibly be. As far as Endicott is concerned, black people’s potential reaches as far as being house ornaments, just like plants. However, through their conversation, Virgil asks him a direct question that offends Endicott, and Endicott, seeing himself as a father-figure over all black men, harshly slaps him. Just as quickly, Virgil slaps him back and stares down at him, and without words, the scene shows the breaking point the ‘60s came to as far as race relations; the meek have finally inherited the earth, and no one was going to make them give it back. Probably because of this scene alone, a 1970 blaxploitation sequel to In the Heat of the Night called They Call Me MISTER Tibbs, was released.
Another character Poitier played in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) further shows how far black men had come by the latter half of the ‘60s. In one of the driving scenes toward the climax, Poitier’s character John Prentice and his father (Roy Glenn) are having an argument concerning John’s intention on marrying Joey (Katharine Houghton), a white woman. The central part of the argument is hinged on John’s father feeling that John is stepping out of his boundaries as a black man in America, however, John’s father is only thinking from his experiences in America and not from John’s late-1960s America, as indicated by John’s speech:
You listen to me. You say you don’t want to tell me how to live my life. So what do you think you’ve been doing? You tell me what rights I’ve got or haven’t got, and what I owe to you for what you’ve done for me. Let me tell you something. I owe you nothing! If you carried that bag a million miles, you did what you’re supposed to do! Because you brought me into this world. And from that day you owed me everything you could ever do for me like I will owe my son if I ever have another. But you don’t own me! You can’t tell me when or where I’m out of line, or try to get me to live my life according to your rules. You don’t even know what I am, Dad, you don’t know who I am. You don’t know how I feel, what I think. And if I tried to explain it the rest of your life you will never understand. You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believe the way it was for you is the way it’s got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight of you be off our backs! You understand, you’ve got to get off my back! Dad… Dad, you’re my father. I’m your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man. (IMDB)
What John says is one of the driving nails in the late ‘60s, proclaiming to its audience that race and color are only differences in each other, not the staunch dividers they were thought to be.
The marked difference between pre-MLK Walter and post-MLK Virgil shows how far the ‘60s changed the conversation about race. While in the early part of the ‘60s, black people were still fighting for their identity and rights, the latter part of the ‘60s has most of black America embracing their heritage and culture as well as fighting and winning their deserved rights. The ‘60s was the time when black Americans finally didn’t have to conform to white America. They could receive the same rights, privileges, and be held to the same expectations as white Americans. Instead, they could finally show the Endicotts of America what it felt like to be slapped around.
SOURCES:
Daniel Petrie, dir. A Raisin in the Sun. Perf. Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee. Columbia Pictures, 1961.
Norman Jewison, dir. In the Heat of the Night. Perf. Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger. United Artists, 1967.
n.p. “A Raisin in the Sun”. IMDB. Web. IMDB.com, Inc. 2010. 26 November 2010.
n.p. “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”. IMDB. Web. IMDB.com, Inc. 2010. 1 December 2010.
n.p. “In the Heat of the Night”. IMDB. Web. IMDB.com, Inc. 2010. 26 November 2010.
