A Prom Divided

Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Students from Montgomery County High School in Mount Vernon, Ga., before the promos

About now, high-school seniors everywhere slip into a glorious sort of limbo. Waiting out the final weeks of the school year, they begin rightfully to revel in the shared thrill of moving on. It is no different in south-central Georgia’s Montgomery County, made up of a few small towns set between fields of wire grass and sweet onion. The music is turned up. Homework languishes. The future looms large. But for the 54 students in the class of 2009 at Montgomery County High School, so, too, does the past. On May 1 — a balmy Friday evening — the white students held their senior prom. And the following night — a balmy Saturday — the black students had theirs.

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Gillian Laub for The New York Times

The white students’ prom was held on May 1 at a community center in nearby Vidalia; the black students had theirs at the same place the following night.

Racially segregated proms have been held in Montgomery County — where about two-thirds of the population is white — almost every year since its schools were integrated in 1971. Such proms are, by many accounts, longstanding traditions in towns across the rural South, though in recent years a number of communities have successfully pushed for change. When the actor Morgan Freeman offered to pay for last year’s first-of-its-kind integrated prom at Charleston High School in Mississippi, his home state, the idea was quickly embraced by students — and rejected by a group of white parents, who held a competing “private” prom. (The effort is the subject of a documentary, “Prom Night in Mississippi,” which will be shown on HBO in July.) The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students — referred to by many students as “the black-folks prom” and “the white-folks prom” — are organized outside school through student committees with the help of parents. All students are welcome at the black prom, though generally few if any white students show up. The white prom, students say, remains governed by a largely unspoken set of rules about who may come. Black members of the student council say they have asked school administrators about holding a single school-sponsored prom, but that, along with efforts to collaborate with white prom planners, has failed. According to Timothy Wiggs, the outgoing student council president and one of 21 black students graduating this year, “We just never get anywhere with it.” Principal Luke Smith says the school has no plans to sponsor a prom, noting that when it did so in 1995, attendance was poor.

Students of both races say that interracial friendships are common at Montgomery County High School. Black and white students also date one another, though often out of sight of judgmental parents. “Most of the students do want to have a prom together,” says Terra Fountain, a white 18-year-old who graduated from Montgomery County High School last year and is now living with her black boyfriend. “But it’s the white parents who say no. … They’re like, if you’re going with the black people, I’m not going to pay for it.”

“It’s awkward,” acknowledges JonPaul Edge, a senior who is white. “I have as many black friends as I do white friends. We do everything else together. We hang out. We play sports together. We go to class together. I don’t think anybody at our school is racist.” Trying to explain the continued existence of segregated proms, Edge falls back on the same reasoning offered by a number of white students and their parents. “It’s how it’s always been,” he says. “It’s just a tradition.”

Earlier this month, on the Friday night of the white prom, Kera Nobles, a senior who is black, and six of her black classmates drove over to the local community center where it was being held. Standing amid a crowd of about 80 parents, siblings and grandparents, they snapped pictures and whooped appreciatively as their white friends — blow-dried, boutonniered and glittering in a way that only high-school seniors can — did their “senior walk,” parading in elegant pairs into the prom. “We got stared at a little, being there,” said one black student, “but it wasn’t too bad.”

After the last couple were announced, after they watched the white people’s father-daughter dance and then, along with the other bystanders, were ushered by chaperones out the door, Kera and her friends piled into a nearby KFC to eat. Whatever elation they felt for their dressed-up classmates was quickly wearing off.

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“My best friend is white,” said one senior girl, a little glumly. “She’s in there. She’s real cool, but I don’t understand. If they can be in there, why can’t everybody else?”

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Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Friends and family come together to watch the white students parade into their prom.

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Gillian Laub for The New York Times

Niesha Bell, a senior, was voted queen of the black prom. Niesha’s mother, Angela Bell, graduated from Montgomery County High School in 1978 and also attended a racially segregated prom. "I don’t see how things will ever change around here," says Angela, a cashier. "It’s hard to see my girl in the same situation I was in 30 years ago."

The seven teenagers — a mix of girls and boys — slowly worked their way through two buckets of fried chicken. They cracked jokes about the white people’s prom (“I feel bad for them! Their prom is lame!”). They puzzled merrily over white girls’ devotion both to tanning beds (“You don’t like black people, but you’re working your hardest to get as brown as I am!”) and also to the very boys who were excluded from the dance (“Half of those girls, when they get home, they’re gonna text a black boy”). They mused about whether white parents really believed that by keeping black people out of the prom, it would keep them out of their children’s lives (“You think there aren’t going to be black boys at college?”). And finally, more somberly, they questioned their white friends’ professed helplessness in the face of their parents’ prejudice (“You’re 18 years old! You’re old enough to smoke, drive, do whatever else you want to. Why aren’t you able to step up and say, ‘I want to have my senior prom with the people I’m graduating with?’ ”).

It was getting late now. KFC was closing. Another black teenager was mopping the floor nearby. A couple of the boys mentioned they had to wash their cars in the morning. Kera had an early hair appointment. The next night, they would dress up and dance raucously for four hours before tumbling back outside, one step closer to graduating. In the meantime, a girl named Angel checked her cellphone to see if any of the white kids had texted from inside their prom. They hadn’t. Angel shrugged. “I really don’t understand,” she said. “Because I’m thinking that these people love me and I love them, but I don’t know. Tonight’s a different story.”

I`mnot suprised by this at all i live in Georgia and some of the people here are still stuck in the  fifties and sixties.The white people and the black people both.In particular the older genration.The would not dare to do something to upset "Mr. Whiteman".

To me the Union Army did not do a complete job during the war. If it were left up to me I wouldn't have taken any prisoners and perhaps we wouldn't be having the problems were having now from these leftover whites. I say let's do the whole thing over. White folks need to be taught a serious lesson. They still think that we are beast  part time slaves and stupid fools.  But then again that wouldn't work, because were to busy marrying their daughters and sons.

 I just moved to the south  from NY and It seem's like I just moved into a prison. From what I see, black people in the south are still living under the restraints of slavery, physical and mental. They have not changed their living conditions and have accepted the white way of life knowing that it is wrong. Perhaps they are waiting for their pie in the sky. Why won't they teach these white folks a lesson. I encourage anyone black living in the north to take a trip to the south and you will see what I mean. I'ts unreal!!!

Many work two to three jobs making 7 to10 dollars an hour (WITH A DEGREE). This, the majority accepts. The living conditions in Charlott NC and South Carolina for many poor black are ashame. Dogs live in better homes. Yet this they accept. Segregation in housing still exist in the south on a sneek tip. They have classification codes in every part of the south. Blacks live in area 1 which is the poor area . Whites live in area 9 which is the up-class area. (NO BLACKS ALLOWED UNLESS YOU ARE MAKING $75,000 TO $100,000 PER).  This they accept. I't shameful that's what it is

 I went looking for a job and was offered 7 dollars and fifty cents per hour to perform security duties. As an ex-law enforcement officer from the north I felt disrespected . I asked, does this salary come along with a box? The rat soup interviewer said, what do you mean, I said, well that's what your asking me to live in with that salary.

North Carolina and South Carolina, is also a right to work state. Meaning YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO WORK. You can go to work tomorrow and be fired for no reason because that's the law of the south.  I did not know that before I moved down here. I was fired from a job because I didn't say yes maam to some short bamboon looking white supervisor. She said I was to upperdy. The brothers and grown sisters down here, are still yessa bossin and yessa maam to these rat-soup eatin saltines out of fear of being fired.

The south is not unionized and white folks take advantage of this, by treating blacks anyway they want in employment.The point I'm trying to make is that black people in the south have accepted the southern way of living. To me, many are just plain lazy, scared, and won't do anything to change their condition...just complain and kill each other. That is what's happening in the south along with white supremacy.

From Charleston to the high mountains of North Carolina you won't find one black owned business on MAIN STREET. I have been up and down main street and I know what I'm talking about,

Black people down here still buy from and support white owned and foreign businesses who care less about them. Montgomery County High School is a perfect example. I still say that the black people in the south (the majority of them) are a different breed of blacks, they are not the real deal, because they only complain, and refuse to empower themselves and fight back. MLK would turn over in his grave if he knew what was happening in the hard fought  for south.

We already know about the confederate flag waving cowardly white beast of the south. He waves that flag and black people down here have accepted this like a slave. He waves it right in their face and they say nothing. White folks are cowards because they wouldn't  come up north and wave that stupid flag. He knows what would happen. He would't get off the NJ Turnpike or even make it to the NY Thruway. As long as black people in Montgomery and elsewhere let him do what he want's He will always reign without a rival.

This is Nothing New - thought it was Strange 10 years ago when I Relocated to the South.

Have a Terrific Tuesday....

. only if you are Good.