The Small Town in Mississippi That Feels Straight Out Of ‘In The Heat of the Night’

When I was in middle school, In the Heat of the Night was just “that cop show adults watched after Wheel of Fortune.” My friends and I couldn’t have explained its themes if you bribed us with a bucket of Dairy Queen Blizzards. I remember sitting in the living room while my parents leaned in, murmuring things about race, justice, and “how far we’ve come, but how far we still have to go.” Meanwhile, I was just impressed that the police chief wore a hat indoors.

With time, though, the show’s weight settled in. In the Heat of the Night wasn’t just a TV procedural, y'all, it was an unflinching look at race relations, small-town politics, and the messy business of justice in America. Carroll O’Connor’s Chief Gillespie and Howard Rollins’s Detective Tibbs did more than solve murders… they confronted generational divides, power struggles, and the complexities of seeking justice in a community resistant to change. The series addressed issues ranging from police brutality and poverty to domestic violence. Looking back, it was radical for network TV in the late ’80s and early ’90s… packaging social justice inside the shell of a crime drama.

Now here’s the twist: the Sparta, Mississippi, where all that drama unfolded? Completely fictional. Not a single city council meeting or tense diner scene happened in a “real” Sparta. And yet, if you want to walk down streets that feel like Sparta—equal parts historic, complex, and beautiful—you don’t need to time-travel into an NBC studio set. You need Holly Springs, Mississippi. Let me introduce you.

Holly Springs sits just south of Tennessee, with about 7,000 residents and enough historic architecture to make Instagram feel like it needs to pay rent. It’s the county seat of Marshall County, which means the courthouse is front and center... like Gillespie’s fictional stomping grounds. The streets radiate around a historic square, framed by buildings on the National Register of Historic Places. Antebellum homes here aren’t background props; they’re lived-in, loved, and in some cases, open for tours. You want a mansion so stunning it feels like a film set? Holly Springs has the most beautiful antebellum home in Mississippi.

And unlike TV fiction, Holly Springs’ history isn’t written in script notes. It’s layered, complicated, and worth walking through slowly. This is where Ida B. Wells was born, a fearless journalist who took on lynching when the nation preferred to look the other way. Clifton DeBerry, the first African American nominated for president by a political party, also called Holly Springs home. More recently, Shepard Smith, the broadcast journalist you’ve seen on NBC and CNBC, grew up here. That’s quite the résumé for a town of its size.

Of course, Holly Springs isn’t just a history lecture. The town is home to Phillips Grocery, a historic spot known for serving some of the best burgers in Mississippi. The restaurant’s unpolished charm only adds to its authenticity. There’s also the Marshall County Historical Museum, where taxidermy sits beside Civil Rights memorabilia, like an attic where your eccentric uncle kept everything that his wife asked him to get rid of. And if you’re feeling reflective, the Mitting Manning Tomb is as hauntingly beautiful as anything Tibbs might have stumbled across in an episode.

Here’s a fun personal detour: the first season of the show was filmed in Hammond, Louisiana, not Mississippi. Later, crews wandered across the South, including my own family’s restaurant in Social Circle, Georgia. For a single day, our dining room became Sparta, with cameras and lights filling every empty space. My brother even had a brief cameo, riding his bike past the set and delivering a single line: “Woo.” Not me, though. I wasn't interested in on-camera work. Instead, I got the chance to meet Carroll O’Connor up close. He was warm, approachable, and genuinely engaging, which was a far cry from the stern authority figure he played on TV. Middle-school Jacki was amazed by how effortlessly charismatic he was, and I still remember the intensity of his bright blue eyes. I still think about it every time I see reruns.

So yes, I might be biased, but when I explore the streets of Holly Springs, I can almost hear Gillespie’s drawl or see Tibbs working a case. The courthouse square feels like it could stage a confrontation at any moment. The tree-lined streets, the mix of grandeur and grit... It’s all there.

And here’s the best part: you don’t need a film crew or a network deal to step into that world. You just need a weekend and a sense of curiosity. Visit Holly Springs. Walk where history and television overlap. Eat a burger that deserves its own close-up. And maybe, just maybe, catch yourself imagining you’re in Sparta… because in many ways, you are.

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