School Holds First Integrated Prom

[DonViejo]

ABBEVILLE, Ga. — Mareshia Rucker watched in frustration last weekend as several dozen classmates in tuxedos and gowns walked into an Art Deco theater for her high school’s “white prom.”

Like all black students at Wilcox County High School, she was not invited. The rural county in central Georgia is one of the last pockets in the country with racially segregated proms.

“These are people I see in class every day,” said Ms. Rucker, a senior, who hid in a parked car outside the prom. “What’s wrong with dancing with me, just because I have more pigment?”

But this weekend, after decades of separate proms for white students and black students, Wilcox County will have its first integrated prom.

Organized by students, it is open to all, at a ballroom in nearby Cordele. Nearly half of the school’s 380 students have registered, with roughly equal numbers of black students and white students.

full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/us/in-rural-georgia-students-step-up-to-offer-integrated-prom.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

[Posteritatis]

1. Now to see if the school actually handles it properly next year

It's kind of telling that the parents are organizing the segregated proms specifically to avoid an integrated one, and have been doing so for two generations.

[Brickbat]

2. Is that the headline? Because it doesn't seem like the school is the one offering it.

It's kids who give a damn.

[DonViejo]

3. This specific headline is from....

The Dailly Beast's "Cheat Sheet":

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2013/04/27/georgia-school-holds-first-integrated-prom.html

The headline over the actual New York Times story is:

A Racial Divide Closes as Students Step Up

[Arcanetrance]

4. How the Fuck is this possible in 2013

I mean this is just ridiculously backward how has this been allowed to continue.

[dballance]

5. Because the School Doesn't Actually Sponsor a Prom

The "white" prom is parent-sponsored and the integrated prom is parent-sponsored. The racists and the bigots stopped the school-sponsored prom back during the years schools were being integrated to avoid having to have an integrated prom.

[Arcanetrance]

6. And no adults have found this to be a disgusting tradition to continue

[dballance]

7. Fortunately, The Adults Sponsoring the Integrated Prom Must See This as an Issue.

I don't know about your experience with the South. I grew up there in the 70's/80's. The n-word was still commonly used as was the phrase "Jew me down on that price" and some people in "white" neighborhoods would sell their houses when an African American family moved into the neighborhood. It was big talk when the first black family moved out of what was traditionally called "colored town," a part of the city that was literally on the other side of the railroad tracks from what were whites-only schools and neighborhoods until the Civil Rights Movement and Brown v. Board of Education. The schools in my town didn't fully integrate until I was in first grade - which was 1970. I lived in TN. GA is worse.

My friends who worked in Atlanta and lived in Cobb county north of Atlanta used to say Cobb stood for County Operated By Bigots. This was in the late 80's and early 90's. For far too many people in the South the Civil War never ended and Reconstruction never really happened. Wilcox County, where the high school in the article is located, has a population of under 10,000 people and is pretty far south. It has been my experience that places like that with a small population tend to cling to the old ways.

[Arcanetrance]

8. Truthfully

I don't have much experience with the south. I visit Florida a couple times a year to see my grandmother. I've been to Texas a couple times but it would be less than two weeks if added up. Besides those place's I went to Virginia once while visiting a cousin in DC. But I've never lived in the south and thus my experience is probably limited. It just surprised me it took this long for adults to organize this or even try to encourage the school to host the integrated prom and stomp out this segregation crap.