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Segregated Prom Divides Classmates
By Jon Groat
Medill News Service
WASHINGTON -- Last year, Gerica McCrary fought hard for her right to party. Party with both her white and black classmates at an integrated prom, that is.
McCrary, a black senior, helped end her school's 31-year-old tradition of holding separate all-black and all-white proms when, in 2002 as a junior, she organized the first integrated prom.
The theme: "Making it Last Forever."
It didn't even last a year.
Taylor County High School in Georgia - halfway between Macon and Columbus - reverted to a segregated prom in early May when some students held an all-white prom 50 miles away in Columbus. Another all-inclusive prom was held one week later in a ballroom at nearby Fort Valley State University.
"There are just a lot of 'redneck people' who were not ready for change or to think outside the box," McCrary said. "So they decided they were going back to the whites-only ball."
When Gerard Latimore, a 16-year-old black junior, found out about the all-white prom, he said: "We didn't want to believe it. It was crazy, but we weren't going to be able to stop it."
Latimore organized this year's integrated prom as the president of the school's black junior class.
Yes, black junior class. Even the school's student groups break down along racial lines.
In addition to the school-sponsored student council, whites and blacks sponsor their own separate, private councils, according to Latimore. The private white council is called the "Taylor County High School Class of 2004" while the private black council is called "The Fearless and Proud Class of 2004," he said. The school's 400 students are about half black and half white.
School superintendent Wayne Smith did not return calls and did not condemn the separate proms in press reports.
On May 12, Smith told local paper Columbus Ledger-Enquirer that the proms aren't school-sponsored events and haven't been for over 30 years.
Instead the proms were organized by the junior class of each private student council and paid for by prom-goers through ticket sales. Teachers and school officials weren't Ð and still aren't Ð supposed to be involved in the planning.
Smith said school administrators quit sponsoring a prom -- typically held in a neighboring city up to 50 miles away Ð in 1970 because they were worried about the liability of having students drive to the events, according to published reports. That also happens to be the same year the schools were integrated.
Because of the private nature of the parties, Smith said he had no right to intervene.
"That's like a birthday party," Smith told the paper. "If I'm not invited, I can't show up and say it's wrong."
Aaron Watson, a white college student who graduated from Taylor County High last year, disagreed. He told the Ledger-Enquirer that the school couldn't stop the parties "but they can stand up and say it's wrong. They can have influence."
Gerard Latimore's mother, Glenda, attended one of the first segregated proms after the school was integrated. "My son, he has never been separated according to his race," she said. "The year before, he was so happy. He didn't know how to perceive [the return to segregated proms] and it confused him."
"'Look son,'" Latimore said she told her teenager, "'I went to a segregated prom, your father went to a segregated prom, your uncles went to a segregated prom. We had a blast, we had fun, it didn't hurt us.'"
Those proms were more than three decades ago.
But, even in 2002, cutting in on the whites-only prom for the first time wasn't easy.
"At first there were a lot of people with doubts," McCrary said. She was threatened and insulted by some of her classmates but continued to work for an integrated prom.
"We just kept pushing people," she said.
In the end, some whites boycotted that one and only integrated prom. Other whites asked for their money back.
This year, however, some whites in the community denounced the segregated proms after intense global media coverage brought unwanted attention to their community.
Local mayors, city councils and neighboring school boards all condemned the party in the media frenzy.
"The opinions of a few don't always reflect the opinions of an entire community," Richard Turk, the white mayor of Butler, Ga., told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. "I regret that it happened. We thought it was all solved last year."
Few students have been willing to talk about the parties. A CNN TV crew caught up with some May 2 as they entered the whites-only prom.
"It's not racist," one student told the crew. "It's just the way it has always been, a tradition." Another added, "There's going to be black people catering there, so it's not a racist prom."
McCrary said even fewer students would talk to her about why they reverted to a segregated prom.
"I went up to [the white prom organizers] and asked them, 'Why are you still doing this?' They wouldn't answer. I guess truth just hurts sometimes and they can't look you in your face because they're ashamed of something."
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