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Posted on 05/11/2003 9:29:53 AM PDT by eyespysomething
One school, two proms
Wrightsville keeps segregated proms alive
By Don Schanche Jr.
Telegraph Staff Writer
WRIGHTSVILLE - Wrightsville likes to call itself the friendliest town in Georgia.
But when it comes to the high school prom, friends go their separate ways.
Each year, during the weeks leading up to graduation at Johnson County High School, white students go to a white prom and black students go to a black one.
"It's always been like that," said senior Carla Rachels, 17, who helped organize Friday night's white prom in nearby Dublin. "We don't see it as being a big deal."
But suddenly the tradition of separate proms is a big deal indeed.
National attention has been focused on rural Taylor County, halfway between Macon and Columbus. A group of seniors there recently held a whites-only prom, a year after Taylor County High School held its first-ever integrated prom. Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly slammed the tradition of exclusion last week on national TV, and ripped into Gov. Sonny Perdue for failing to take the lead in opposing it.
When word began to circulate that Taylor County wasn't alone in holding dual proms, Johnson County entered the spotlight. Rachels found herself explaining things to People magazine, where she is quoted in this week's edition.
The segregated proms, a tradition that dates back to the days of segregated schools, managed to survive quietly for decades, without attracting much attention from the outside world.
But it isn't as if nobody ever tried to change it.
In 1995, a group of black residents demonstrated for an end to the separate proms, to no avail.
"They've told us blacks and whites won't never have a prom together," said the Rev. Cornelius Horton, 70, a past president of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference chapter. "It needs to be changed. This here is a racist community."
Horton's grandson, 17-year-old James Markell Blair, is graduating this year from Johnson County High. He went to the black prom last year, which like the white one, is held in Dublin. But this year he didn't bother.
"If it would have been an integrated prom I probably would have gone. But I decided not to go this year because it would have been the same thing, basically," he said.
The community, Blair said, has a lot of catching up to do.
"Yeah, they're still behind," he said. "They're a lot behind."
Johnson County in east-central Georgia, like Taylor to the west, is a pocket of high poverty and low expectations. Johnson County's population numbered 8,556 in the 2000 census, and Taylor's, 8,820. The black-white ratio at the high schools in both counties is about 50-50.
In both communities, roughly four of every 10 residents is black. And in both places, the percentage of people living below the poverty line is nearly double the statewide level. Several other measures, including high school dropouts and teen pregnancies also are higher than average. Johnson County has one of the highest rates of children born to unmarried mothers in the entire state.
But Johnson County has one distinction that makes it the envy of every other place in Georgia. It is the birthplace of UGA football legend Herschel Walker, who led the Bulldogs to the national championship in 1980 and won the Heisman Trophy.
Walker returned to his hometown last week, when the high school football field was named in his honor.
But even Walker's senior class held separate proms for blacks and whites. Back then, he said, "I never really thought that much about it."
Now, he suggests it is time to end the separate proms.
"Today I wish things would change a little bit," he said. "Because this world is changing so much. Coming after the war we just had, I think people can see we are a country, we are together. It takes all of us to make anything beautiful."
Private events
The two proms in Johnson County are private parties, held independently of the high school.
"The Board of Education has passed a policy that the school will not sponsor a prom. That's plain and simple," said Johnson High principal Roland Thomas. He said the high school does hold several dances each year, open to all students.
But the prom is different.
The students and their parents make all the arrangements for the prom and pay all the bills. The events are held in Dublin because Wrightsville lacks a hall big enough.
No one seems to remember when the rule was passed to keep the school's hands off the prom.
Older residents recall that the white prom was indeed school-sponsored in the days before public schools were integrated in the late 1960s.
The new superintendent of schools, Dorothy Reynolds, said she hasn't been in Wrightsville long enough to know how the policy originated or why. She speculated that liability issues may have played a role, along with the burden that organizing a prom places on teachers and staff.
But Reynolds says she is sure of one thing: Johnson County isn't much different from other communities when it comes to racial attitudes.
"I believe there are good people in Johnson County, just like there are good people everywhere else, who are fair-minded and who value other people because of who they are ... and for whom racism is not an issue," she said. "I think anywhere you go in this world - not just in Georgia or anywhere - there are people who, unfortunately and sadly, have viewpoints that are not what they should be."
Alvin Moorman, the lone black member of the Johnson County Board of Education, currently serves as chairman. He believes the separate proms won't last forever.
"I think, and it's just my opinion, one day the school will probably sponsor a prom. I can't speak for other board members or the community. I would like to see a school-sponsored prom."
That's one prom and not two, he said. But he isn't agitating for change.
He will support it "if it comes up," he said. But he added, "I don't plan to initiate that."
Year after year
Senior James Markell Blair said some of the students tried to change things this year, as they have tried in the past.
"The issue comes up every year: Are we going to have an integrated prom? But it turns out to be segregated," he said.
"We were going to like do fund-raisers together, 'cause we really didn't care whether the school sponsored it or not. We just wanted to have an integrated prom, 'cause a lot of black people have a lot of white friends, and a lot of white people have a lot of black friends, and we wanted to have our prom together with our friends.
"But there were just some of them that said they weren't going to attend the prom if we had an integrated prom. So they decided not to do it."
Rachels, the high school senior, agreed that the subject of a unified prom gets discussed every year.
"There's like maybe going to be somebody every year that wants to do it. But it's kind of like a majority that wants to keep it like it is."
It isn't about prejudice, she said, but tradition.
"I don't think there's a lot of tension between us," she said. "We're all friends, we just have different interests. We're all very close. It's not racial."
Blair's grandfather, the Rev. Horton, believes the young people are simply bowing to the opinions of their elders.
"It ain't so much the young folks. It's the old folks that still got that meanness and hate in them," he said.
Horton offers first-hand testimony about how bitter racial tension can be in Johnson County. In 1980, Wrightsville gained national notoriety when a group of whites, including sheriff's deputies, attacked blacks during a civil-rights demonstration. Horton was there.
"I got beat to the ground," he said. His car was stripped and shoved into a pond. He spent three nights in jail. No one was ever prosecuted.
Horton says the presence of not just one but two Confederate flags at a Civil War monument beside the courthouse stands as testimony that attitudes haven't mellowed in Johnson County.
County manager Doug Eaves acknowledged that Johnson County had its share of race problems 23 years ago, but he believes those are in the past. He pointed out that a new memorial listing all of Johnson County's war dead will soon be erected, replacing an old one that recognized only the white soldiers. All of the county's boards are integrated, he said, and the county work force reflects the racial makeup of the community.
"We want to encourage all of our citizens to work together," he said.
Vickie Roberts, who runs the Johnson County Senior Citizens Center, is the parent of a graduating high school senior. A 1973 graduate of Johnson County High School, she sees nothing wrong with holding separate, private parties to honor the students.
"People have always done it that way," she said. "The parents just get together and raise the money." Roberts said she believes the parents are only complying with the students' own decisions to hold private proms.
"Let me ask you a question," she said to a visiting journalist. "Why are they making such a big deal about it? To me, if it's working and not broken, why fix it?"
To contact Don Schanche Jr., call (478) 453-8308 or e-mail schanche@alltel.net.
Yea! Georgia sure does look good nowadays.
And yes, I live in GA, and have my whole life.
I've never heard of any of this until Taylor County integrated their prom last year.
This seperation of proms seems a little more , I dunno, hateful.
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In the early 90's, my son graduated from San Jose State here in the oh so tolerant, diverse People's Republic of California. SJSU held separate Graduation, Black Graduation, and Latino Graduation ceremonies.
(There may have also been an Asian Graduation but I'm not sure about that.)
What?! Unbelievable!
Hummm...and yet I can't help wonder if the shoe was on the other foot - if the black students rallied for and got the right to have a Black-only Prom - would there be this outcry?
Also, the angle of this story the writer stresses: white students, white-only prom. The flip side of this is, of course, black-students have their black-only prom.
And last put not least, are these proms 100% segregated? That no student of whatever color is ever allowed, indeed forbidden, to attend the "other" prom?
Everybody does it (Northerners are as racists are Southerners)Please feel free to add to the listTwo wrongs make one right (Blacks are allowed to have black proms)
False analogies (Never been to a party where all the people were white?
Strawmens galore (The US Constitution allows freedom of association)
The media just loves to pick on Southerners.
This is beyond wrong. Time for this school to get with the times- this isn't 1940, people.
Three-way is an interesting development--goes to show that at least in Lyons, Ga., segregation isn't just between whites and blacks, but between blacks and Hispanics.
Won't never???
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