In a 2013 interview with "CBS Sunday Morning," Sidney Poiter explained the genesis of the Tibbs-slaps-back moment, how he was conscious of what we might now call representation in "In the Heat of the Night." He recalled telling the people who cast him, "If [Endicott] slaps me, I'm going to slap him back. You will put on paper that the studio agrees that the film will be shown nowhere in the world with me standing there taking the slap."
While answering violence with violence can sometimes make a situation worse, it's important to remember the context of Tibbs' return slap and Poitier's insistence upon including it. Stirling Silliphant, the screenwriter who penned "In the Heat of the Night," was writing from a white perspective, and he may not have appreciated the full symbolic weight of the moment in question. Coming as it did in 1967 in the midst of the civil rights movement, Poitier knew that having his character take the slap from Endicott and not stand up for himself would send the wrong message. "I knew that I would have been insulting every Black person in the world," he
