School Holds First Integrated Prom

[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.