Segregation in schools may have ended decades ago, but some schools like Wilcox County High School in Georgia have yet to desegregate school functions like prom.
“There’s a white prom and there’s an integrated prom,” said Keela Bloodworth, a White student at Wilcox.
“We’re embarrassed, it’s embarrassing,” she said, while speaking to a local Fox affiliate, along with her friends Stephanie Sinnot, Mareshia Rucker, and Quanesha Wallace.
Friends since they have been in the fourth grade, the group of girls, now seniors, say they do everything together except prom night, since Bloodworth and Sinnot are White, while Rucker and Wallace are Black.
“We are all friends,” Sinnot said. “That’s just kind of not right that we can’t go to prom together.”
The school’s rule about not having any interracial mixing at prom night is taken seriously, as Bloodworth said that the school “would probably have the police come out there and escort [non-White students] off the premises.”
That’s exactly what happened last year, when a bi-racial student was turned away from entering the White prom. The homecoming dance at the school is also segregated, and even though the school elected only one homecoming court, which Wallace won, there were still two separate dances.
“I felt like there had to be a change,” said Wallace, who was not invited to the White homecoming. “For me to be a Black person and the king to be a White person, I felt like why can’t we come together.”
Bringing people together is exactly what these four girls are now trying to do along with other students at Wilcox, by organizing a prom for everyone to attend called the “Integrated Prom.” The students have started a Facebook page hoping to gain support and are hosting several fundraising events to pay for the prom.
“If we don’t change it nobody else will,” Bloodworth said.
But not every student supports the segregated prom.
“I put up posters for the ‘Integrated Prom’ and we’ve had people ripping them down at the school,” Bloodworth said.
Even though they have been met with resistance, the group says they will continue to push for reform.
There will still be two proms at Wilcox this year, but neither will be financed by or allowed to take place at Wilcox County High School. The students told a local affiliate that when they pushed for one prom, the school offered to permit an integrated prom but added they would not stop segregated proms.