I am just stunned. I cannot believe in 2009 there is still segregated proms in the USA. There is a film premiering at Sundance Festival this weekend highlighting this issue.
Story here
… man, I thought you’d be complaining about someone having decided everybody had to go in black and white after setting your eye on some gorgeous red dress or something like that…
Well I for one don’t think it’s fair to force the black kids to have to line dance and listen to Toby Keith. I’d want my own prom too were I them. 
I never thought I could imagine a situation where I’d be begging for modern rap or soul-pop but a southern white prom would be one.
A prom just isn’t a prom without a powder blue tuxedo.
Well, the story says it was integrated in 2008…
[Off-topic]Until this past year (2008) my high school reunions (southern high school) were all segregated too. My cousin and I have always refused to attend.[/off-topic]
That’s not much off-topic.
I graduated in 1998 and I haven’t kept up with the school since, but everything was segregated in my (southern, again) school when I went. All the schools in the area were like this; it’s probably a lot more common than you’d think. I always wondered how racially mixed kids and/or interracial couples dealt with it. Not to mention races other than black or white. Maybe the influx of Hispanic kids has helped put all this to rest? I don’t know. I never really “got it” when I was there (I didn’t go to dances or involve myself in anything if I could avoid it), but it always seemed really dumb to me also. It was mostly the faculty that kept it going; all the kids I knew thought it was dumb.
That’s the real question… do interracial couples go to both? Just one? Neither?
I don’t think that’s really off-topic either 5-4-Fighting,I do think that is just sad though, I’m glad you refused to go. Now that it’s integrated, will you attend?
Great question, I would love to know the answer to that. I wonder if the schools that did do the integrated proms last year will now continue with just one. I would also like to know if there are still schools out there have two proms.
For these segregated dances, how did/does that work? Did the school sponsor two proms, are there two PTAs, is the prom put on by someone else?
My school was redneck as hell, but with only enough blacks to count on one hand (literally - I can name off all of the black kids from my school - only one in my class of ~200) - it was not an issue.
Weird. Was this mandated and endorsed by the school, or was the segregation voluntary? Because voluntary segregation still happens all the time. But I’m having a hard time believing this could be a forced thing that wasn’t struck down until recently.
I meant to write that it was only slightly off-topic, in that it was about reunions and not proms.
That then brought up the unposted thought in my head (y’all were just supposed to know) that there also might be a further difference because it was about adults years later who could supposedly decide to come together (or not) on their own (not based on possible school policies) and after a bit of maturity.
FC, I might attend now. I couldn’t last summer because of finances and my cousin was working on her doctoral thesis.
Rigamarole, I want to believe our separate proms were voluntarily separate but have a sneaking suspicion, based on what else I know about my alma mater, that the school district would have found a reason and a way to cancel the prom had we tried to make it one. After all, there might have been interracial dancing and we all know what that could have lead to.
It was a huge deal to the parents of the white kids. Check out this video, it’s some of the kids that attended the prom featured in the movie “Prom Night in Mississippi”
I’m just curious about the details. When the student leadership put up banners advertising the dances on the walls, did they write “WHITES ONLY” under “Winter Dance”? Or did everyone just know? Could you crash the other race’s party?
This sounds so bizarre. I graduated high school around the same times as you and this sounds like something from a different era. (Not that it was much of an issue in my 85% white high school.)
Poor Morgan Freeman. He’s probably stuck paying for these for life, or they will go back to being segregated.
me too. is this new or referencing an earlier incident? I remember this making the news a couple of years ago, though it wouldn’t surprise me if it was still going on.
I just had a flashback to 1975.
Now get off my lawn.
I could easily envision scenarios where there are proms for blacks and whites. I can tell you that in my rural school everything we voted on my senior year (prom theme, shirt, song and all that other crap) there were distinct differences in what the blacks wanted and what the whites wanted. I couldn’t say whether it was genuinely cultural or if it was “we can’t be like the blacks/whites so we must choose something different!” We voted democratically and the winner took all so we didn’t have two of everything but it isn’t surprising to me.
I would see having two proms as acceptable in this scenario if it wasn’t labeled as “black prom” and “white prom” and was more along the lines of “prom theme X” and “prom theme Y” and everyone was free to attend either. But the fact that some parents can’t cope with interracial dancing or whatever the heck they are whining about is ridiculous.