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Features
 In
May 2002, the world’s press arrived on the grounds of
Taylor County High School in Butler, Taylor County, Georgia.
They were there to witness the first integrated prom in the
county’s history. Despite the fact the classes had been
integrated since 1971, the prom it seemed, was sacred ground.
It was the biggest party of the year, and had been for over
30 years, a whites-only and blacks-only affair. But last year,
through the determination of black student, Gerica
McCrary, the prom was celebrated as an integrated
event. The excitement was intense, the parents fearful, but
students were thrilled to be making history. This year, however,
in May 2003, Taylor County High School returned to a segregated
prom. White students voted for separate proms, black students
chose an integrated event. The pain of racism is palpable
among members of the county’s black community and IDEAS
producer Mary O’Connell explored this
pain, in the first hour of this two part series Mary discovered
that the segregated prom, far from an isolated incident, was
really a metaphor for contemporary race relations in rural
Georgia.
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 "Two
years ago, Gerica McCrary wanted to
end the 31 year tradition of segregated proms. She was
the black junior class president. She started holding
meetings with the president of the white students. They
couldn't meet at school because they'd have to rent
the cafeteria. The meetings created a buzz that caught
the ear of a teacher, who decided the prom matter should
be put to a vote. In May 2002, Taylor County high school
students agreed to make a date with history by holding
the county's first ever integrated prom.
With it's narrative of resistance, struggle and ultimately
triumph, the media loved the prom story. And Gerica
McCrary would receive top billing as the most
significant force behind the event. 'This is the
start of a new revolution' she told a CNN reporter.
But Gerica's young and idealistic words about a revolution
didn't last much longer than the time it took for the
international press to pack up their lights and cameras
that night. All the smiles and happy faces and good
cheer that was recorded would soon vanish. In May 2003,
separate proms made a come-back. With no record of why.
When I asked whites, if they spoke to me at all, they
would shrug, and say, 'it's just tradition, that's
the way it's always been.'
It became a mantra, 'that's the way it's always been.'
Professor Robert Pratt thinks it needs
to be de-coded. Robert Pratt was the first African-American
professor to be hired in the history department at the
University of Georgia in 1987. Commenting on why whites
use the phrase, 'it's tradition' when explaining
why there's a segregated prom:
- excerpts from the program by Mary O'Connell |
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Click on the link above to see a collection of photographs
Mary O'Connnell took during her visit to Taylor County, Georgia.
RACE AGAINST TIME, Part 2
: THE COLOR LINES CONFERENCE
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Racism and segregation though is certainly
not confined to the small world of rural Georgia. In the
part two of the series, Mary travelled to Harvard University,
to attend The
Color Lines Conference
- the largest event ever organized, on race, in America’s
history. Hundreds of academics presented research papers
confirming the bad news: in most major American cities
and suburbs, resegregation is occurring. |
More and more, blacks and whites are sticking
with their “own kind”, especially through the
nation's school system. The conference attempted to answer
questions that have been dogging the civil rights movement:
Is integration a dying American ideal? How important to a
child’s development is racial diversity and equality?
Picture Credits:
The picture above was created by Lauren and Stan from Artists
for Humanity, an organization that promotes life-transforming
change for youth.
Photograph of Gerica McCrary by Doug Smith.
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RESOURCES
Web sites
The
Civil Rights Project - Harvard University
Tolerance.org
Books
The Unsteady March: The Rise
& Decline of Racial Equality in America, by Philip
A. Klinkner, University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Yellow: Race in America Beyond
Black and White, by Frank H. Wu, Basic
Books, 2001.
Power, Racism and Privilege, The Declining Significance
of Race, by William Julius Wilson, University
of California Press, 1999.
Hanging Together: Equality in an Urban Nation, by
William Taylor, Simon & Schuster, 1971.
The Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming
Democracy, by Gerald Torres, Harvard
University Press, 2003.
Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America,
by Robert Suro, Vintage Books, 1999.
Words that Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech,
and the First Amendment, by Charles Lawrence,
Westview Press, 1993.
The American Dream and the Public Schools, Jennifer
Hochschild, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Sharing America's Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable
Racial Integration, Ingrid Gould Ellen,
Harvard University Press, 2000.
The Other Boston Busing Story, Susan Eaton,
Yale University Press, 2001.
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