' Reilly
Posted on 05/09/2003 3:39:31 PM PDT by citizen
By CAMERON McWHIRTER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BUTLER -- In this corner of peach country, the biggest thing happening in early May usually is the Strawberry Festival in Reynolds, the next town over.
But for the second May in a row, this county seat of 1,900 residents has drawn international media attention and sparked arguments that reached the Georgia governor's office for, of all things, its high school prom.
Make that proms: one all-white, the other integrated.
Last year, for the first time since Taylor County High School integrated three decades ago, the organizers of separate black and white proms decided to merge their off-campus parties into one prom. Reporters from around the world descended on Butler to write about how a new generation of Southerners was breaking down racial barriers.
But this year's prom organizers -- at least some of them -- chose to step back to an all-white prom. Last Friday, a private whites-only prom was held at the Estate, a banquet hall in Columbus, 50 miles to the west. Tonight, an all-races prom will be held at Fort Valley State University. Both self-declared proms are privately funded.
Last year, folks here embraced all the attention. This year, they don't.
"We're getting beat up unfairly, our students are," said Wayne Smith, superintendent of Taylor County Public Schools, moments after an ABC national news crew left his office this week. "We are being shown to the world as a bunch of racists, which is absolutely not true."
Smith said he had been receiving about 200 phone calls and e-mails a day since news spread of last week's whites-only prom.
Valori Moore, editor and publisher of the weekly The Taylor County News and The Butler Herald, wrote in her column this week that she had received angry calls from as far away as New Jersey.
"It's a situation which makes us all look really bad!" she wrote.
If Superintendent Smith gets his way at a school board meeting Monday, the high school will step in next year and host a single prom that will be teacher-chaperoned and liquor-free. Smith said he could not stop individual students from having their own parties afterward, but he had to respond to counter all the negative publicity about the school system.
"There is nothing we can do to preclude private parties," the superintendent said. "Kids are going to do what they are going to do. All we can do is offer an alternative. . . . I had to do something."
Brian Lawson, a 23-year-old air conditioning repairman, attended last week's party with his 18-year-old girlfriend, Erin Posey, a senior at Taylor County High. They plan to attend the second prom tonight as well.
Lawson said having two proms struck him as foolish, and it had split friendships. He said that while he and his girlfriend attended the whites-only party, he didn't consider it the real prom. He did not wear a tuxedo, he said, as he will tonight.
"I want to go hang out and have fun with friends," said Lawson, wearing a T-shirt displaying a photograph of black actor Wesley Snipes. "I don't think the color of your skin decides how much fun you can have at a party. It's not the 1960s; it's 2003. It's time to change."
On the surface, heated discussion about the staging of a dance, or dances, for 88 graduating high school seniors in a remote country town seems the unlikely subject for discussion beyond the confines of the one-story brick high school itself.
But people elsewhere are talking: from pickup trucks outside Allen's supermarket off the courthouse square to British Broadcasting Corp. newscasters in London. The subject even led to nasty verbal jousting between TV commentator Bill O'Reilly, who condemned the separate parties, and radio talker Neal Boortz, who argued the issue was being overblown. O'Reilly has spent days bashing Gov. Sonny Perdue for not condemning the privately sponsored parties.
Perdue spokeswoman Kim King appeared on O'Reilly's television program on the Fox News Network on Tuesday to defend the governor and said Perdue was "disappointed" by the whites-only prom.
The clamor underscores how sensitive, complex and fluid the concept of racial integration can be, especially in the rural South, once the bastion of American segregation.
Towns and cities across the South and across the United States -- no matter what their size -- have wrestled for decades with integration. In many places, not just Taylor County, legal integration of public institutions did not transfer to private institutions and events, like churches, clubs and parties.
In this county of about 8,800, which integrated its schools relatively peacefully in 1970, events such as proms became privately sponsored, and segregated.
Taylor County is 55 percent white and 42 percent black, according to the 2000 census. The graduating high school class is about evenly split racially, according to Smith.
The superintendent said the school board's decision to stop sponsoring proms at the same time school integration took place had nothing to do with race, but was the result of concerns about insurance liability issues. Smith said students throw parties in the nearby cities of Columbus or Macon -- and often drink illegally and drive back home.
Smith and other school officials decry "misguided" media reports of a supposed resurgence of segregation in their community and claim race relations in Taylor County have never been better.
Lonnie Wilson, 70, a black retiree from the Georgia Department of Transportation who has lived his entire life in Butler, said the idea of a whites-only prom was "rotten."
"Why not just have one party for everybody?" he asked.
But Kenneth Dugger, 32, also black and a lifelong Butler resident, said students should be allowed to decide whether to integrate their proms or not.
"If they want to hold their party by themselves, it's their business," he said. "It should be up to the kids. It's their prom."
Hey O'Reilly! When you're in over your head, stop digging.
' Reilly
I agree with this guy ---just keep the government out of social events and keep it from trying to tell people who they have to invite to a party. It'd be better to focus on adult racism, here we have all-black and all-hispanic beauty contests ---no whites allowed, there are hispanic chamber of commerces and black chamber of commerces in some places. How can you tell kids they can't segregate but adults can?
I really don't think that's the case.
We're talking small town rural America. For most of these kids it's just something to do on a weekend. If most of these b/w kids don't normally scoalize together, it's very reasonable for a private party to be one group.
Blacks also have segregated parties and that's OK. Happens all over America.
One more point: Most of the kids at the "white" party will be at the school prom tonight which will be held at Fort Valley State University, a black college.
Those kids certainly did that. I notice that on all the news clips that these kids used quite a few obscene gestures to the cameras. Didn't have sound but, I can imagine the language that went along with their actions.
It gets to be a problem if exculsion is school or business policy. The regular folks will work it out just fine between themselves.
There are some, however, that wish to largely segragate. On both sides.
What hypocrisy!
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