Today, we observe what would have been Sidney Poitier’s 97th birthday.

Today’s scene that I love comes from the 1967 Best Picture winner, In The Heat of the Night.  In this film, Poitier plays Virgil Tibbs, a Northern cop who reluctantly finds himself helping a Southern sheriff (Rod Steiger) investigate a murder.  Tibbs’s number one suspect is Eric Endicott (Larry Gates), who owns what was then a modern-day plantation.

In this scene, Tibbs interrogates Endicott, a paternalistic racist who simply cannot believe or accept that he is being questioned by a black man.  When Endicott responds to one of Tibbs questions by slapping him, Tibbs slaps him right back.

While Endicott’s slap was in the original script, Tibbs’s response was not.  At first, Tibbs was meant to turn the other cheek and leave the plantation without saying a word.  Wisely, Poitier approached director Norman Jewison and objected to that, insisting that Tibbs would respond in kind.  The scene was rewritten and it became one of Poitier’s best moments in the film.