Four high school students in rural Georgia are fundraising to hold the first integrated prom in their county's history. UPDATE: The Wilcox County School District has issued a statement saying that the high school will explore holding a school-sponsored integrated prom in 2014.
Via: facebook.com
For as long as anyone can remember, Wilcox County High School in rural Georgia has held separate, segregated proms for its white students and its black students. This year, four high school seniors are raising money to host the first integrated prom in their county's history.
"We're embarrassed, it's embarrassing," Stephanie Sinnot, Keela Bloodworth, Mareshia Rucker and Quanesha Wallace said in an interview with WSAV News.
The girls, who have been friends since elementary school, are part of a student group that has organized a campaign to fund and publicize the Integrated Prom.
"We realize were making history. Because this has never happened before. So for something like this to come about where we can make a difference or change, it's gonna be valuable to the community. It's really exciting," Mareshia Rucker told WALB News.
Prom isn't the only high school event that Wilcox County High divides along racial lines. Homecoming Quanesha was named homecoming queen, but there were still two separate dances. The Wilcox homecoming queen was not invited to the white dance and she and the homecoming king took separate pictures for the school yearbook.
"I felt like there had to be a change," Quanesha Wallace told WSAV News. "For me to be a black person and the king to be a white person, I felt like why can't we come together?"
Yearbook photos for the Wilcox County High 2012-2013 homecoming king and queen.
Via: facebook.com
Segregated proms still happen, writes Atlanta Journal Constitution education correspondent Maureen Downey, "Because the proms are not officially school events, although a great deal of promoting and planning by students occurs within schools. Since the proms are private parties held off campus without any school funds, schools disavow any control over the events, which are organized by parents and students and reflect historic and lingering racial divides."
"It's integration in the form of interracial dating that many Wilcox County adults find objectionable. So they shy from events thought to encourage it—events such as integrated proms," Cheree Franco writes in her 2009 thesis studying Wilcox County's segregated prom tradition.
In her in-depth look at the county's historic opposition to integrated proms, which was only written four years ago, Franco interviews Amber Phillips, a white junior girl at Wilcox High School who was kicked out of her house when her parents learned that she was dating one of her best male friends, who happened to be black. She was only allowed to move back home after she promised never to speak to the boy again.
"People still talk about me and no guy from school will date me. Many guys still call me 'N-lover' to my face. I don't regret it, but I wouldn't do it again. I learned my lesson," Phillips told Franco.
Now, in 2013, some of the students at Wilcox High School don't want to end the practice of segregated dances. "I put up posters for the "Integrated Prom" and we've had people ripping them down at the school," Keela Bloodworth told WSAV.
