My Mom grew up in Sparta, Illinois, where this film was made (to substitute for Sparta, Mississippi). It was an hour south of St. Louis, but still on the north side of the Mason-Dixon line. When this movie came on TV in the late 60's/early 70's, we were living in St. Paul. Mom would have us watch the movie and show us the racist things that we didn't see growing up in Minnesota. Some were blatant and some were more subtle. You brushed on one of the more subtle items at the end of the movie, where Rod Steiger carries Sidney Poiter's suitcase to the train. This was a big deal to my Mom. At that time in the South, she told us, it would have been VERY unusual for a white man to carry a black man's bag. There are little things like this in the movie that we don't really get the impact of now that audiences in the late 60's would have picked up on.
Good podcast - keep them coming.
