The Good Old Days

Georgia high school hopes to hold integrated prom
Previous efforts haven't been successful

The Associated Press

Published on: 04/10/07

ASHBURN — Breaking from tradition, high school students in this small town are getting together for this year's prom.

Prom night at Turner County High has long been an evening of de facto segregation: white students organized their own unofficial prom, while black students did the same.

This year's group of seniors didn't want that legacy. When the four senior class officers — two whites and two blacks — met with Principal Chad Stone at the start of the school year, they had more on their minds than changes to the school's dress code.

They wanted an all-school prom. They wanted everyone invited.

On April 21, they'll have their wish. The town's auditorium will be transformed into a tropical scene, and for the first time, every junior and senior, regardless of race, will be invited.

The prom's theme: Breakaway.

"Everybody says that's just how it's always been. It's just the way of this very small town," said James Hall, a 17-year-old black student who is the senior class president.

"But it's time for a change."

There are excited announcements of the upcoming dance plastered all over the school, where about 55 percent of students are black and most of the rest are white.

A makeshift countdown to the prom is displayed as a cardboard cutout on a main hallway. Student council members canvass the hallways, asking students to buy a $25 ticket and be a part of history. In the cafeteria, images of palm trees and waterfalls brighten up the sterile walls. "The First Ever!" a poster exclaims. "Got your haircut?"

Students say the self-segregation that splits social circles in school mirrors the attitude of this town of 4,000 people. So getting every student to break from the past could be a difficult task.

With prom night about two weeks away, only half of the 160 upper-class students have bought tickets. And there's talk around the school that some white students might throw a competing party at a nearby lake.

"Everyone is saying they're not going to the school prom," said Steven Tuller, a 17-year-old white junior who doesn't plan to attend either event because he wants to wait until he's a senior. "They're saying it's tradition."

Yet Turner County High already has defied tradition this year. The school abandoned its practice of naming separate white and black homecoming queens. Instead, a mixed-race student was named the county's first solo homecoming queen.

Some alumni welcome change at Turner County High.

"People still think of how life was 20, 30 years ago," said Keith Massey, a 1990 graduate who now runs the popular Keith-A-Que restaurant in town, about 75 miles south of Macon. "And life's got to move on."

Massey recalls an attempt to integrate one of the prom parties when he was in school, but few whites showed up. Attempts to organize a school-wide prom in recent years failed because of a lack of student support.

Stone, serving his first year as the school's principal, has been enthusiastic about an integrated prom. He's funneling $5,000 of his meager discretionary fund to hire a DJ and buy decorations, and he's persuaded a photographer to set up shop at the civic center to snap photos of the couples before the dance.

^^ what do you expect, its the south, its Georgia.

i'm not saying it is right, just that it doesn't surprise me based on the location.

[Edited by - jaydh on 04-10-2007 12:04 PM]

Posted by misterearl:


Nalod - unfortunately, prejudice does NOT stop at the turnstile when one enters an arena. Even in Madison Square Garden. The perceptions and descriptions of players and management are shaped by the exact same bias described in the Imus remarks.

We may all root for the Knicks to win a basketball game on the surface, but you only need to carefully read the derrogatory remarks directed at certain players. Read the descriptions of Eddy Curry as "lazy" or "stupid" or Marbury as "stupid" or that he should STFU to peel back the not-so-veiled negative agenda of such comments.

I don't know why I bother, but then, I'm kinda stupid too.

Curry is called lazy, at least in part, because he has a reputation, from those who've worked with him, that he doesn't train hard in the off-season and doesn't possess a great passion for the sport. As recently as a couple of nights ago Q said, in an MSG interview, he thinks it'll be easier to get Eddy into the gym this summer than the past.

And if Bill Bradley, the Rhodes Scholar, handled himself in the media like Marbury does he'd have been called stupid too.

I grew up in NY and lived in NC now for 20 years.

Im telling you, things are more tense in the cities and there is racism everywhere.

I had a women who worked with me make a remark that she was trying to a price down on a car and said instead "I am trying to Jew him down". Looked at me and then asked if that was not a good thing to say! Its how she was bought up.

I bought a lawn tractor 10 years ago and the old dude " this mower is fine, can't N***** it up no way no how! Thats how good it is". I shook my head and just walked out. The dude was nuts! I voted my displeasure by not buying from him. My coworker came to me later and we talked. She said thats how "daddy" talked and she never thought anything of it. I was cool with it because there was no malice in the statement, just ignorance.

Thats the old generation in the south. Or South Boston, Or Howard Beach, or any area where one group is the distinct majority.

If we all just keep working at it it gets better and better. Not perfect, just better.

In the south the white trash really is evident. Now removed from NY a few years, I can now say there is plenty of them in NY also. The "Archie Bunkers" of the world are plenty in the north. We don't see them while growing up but they are no diffeent than southern trash.

Trash is trash, dumb is dumb!

The problem with these discussions is that blacks want to discuss race and the race relations in america. Unfortunately as soon as a white person stands up and gives his point of view instead of all of us listening, he is attacked by a small minority of the close minded that don't want to hear that point of view because it's a "white" point of view. In teh end the rest of us in the middle(both white and black) that wanted to just discuss the topic at hand decide to move on and find something a little more productive like discussing what Jerome James had for breakfast.

In the end a discussion taht could have been productive instead turns into a few hurt individuals angry at the original topic taking their anger out on anyone that isn't as angry as them. And some other hurt individuals trying to explain what they really meant when they said what they said. 8 pages of nonsense.

You cannot have a discussion about racism unless you are willing to listen to both sides of the party. If you only want to hear your own views you are wasting your time. No white person can ever understand what we go through. To accomplish anything they have to listen and at least empathize with our situation. For most of us we understand that the same goes in reverse. Unfortunately there are far too many(of all races) that want to dismiss that, and this is why little changes.

Also what about George Bush? Noone's ever called him an idiot or stupid or retarded. Why is this type of talk only directed towards marbs and his tats.

but what do I know?

Posted by misterearl:


nor is the discussion simply about "racism"

I've read the majority of your posts and just don't understand what you are talking about. I think it's because you spend ninety percent of your time trying to figure out why everyone is out to get you.

>>Remember we all have our own point of view.

and I already qualified my single opinion by adding

"but what do I know?"

so, what's the problem bipp?

who died and made you the fashion police?

[Edited by - misterearl on 04-10-2007 12:43 PM]