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http://now.msn.com/first-integrated-prom-planned-by-wilcox-county-high-school-ga#scptmg

Georgia high school planning its first ever racially integrated prom

It's worth pointing out that this is actual news from 2013, and not from decades ago. Students from Wilcox County High in Georgia are hoping to organize the school's first integrated prom — ever. While black and white students share classrooms, they have different prom and homecoming dances. According Keela Bloodworth, one of the many students "embarrassed" by the toxic policy, a biracial student was turned away from the white prom (which is privately organized, so it's legal) by police in 2012. Even worse, some at the school still oppose an integrated prom: Bloodworth says posters advertising it have been torn down.

My parents moved to Florida, unknowingly putting me into public high there, not realizing that the schools had only recently desegregated.

If I read this report right http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/022007_FloridaDesegreport.pdf the district only began desegregation in 1970 with "unitary status" achieved only in 1996, which sounds about right.

My school was closed down a few times because of guns in the classroom. There were rock fights in the yard where the kids smoked between classes. It happened that on coming into my new school, I made not just white friends but also I became friends with a wrestler there, a big, very well built black guy, and his sidekick, a very funny guy, and so I never had a rock thrown at me though some of my other white friends did.

I had an odd history in a segregated world. I grew up in white bread world, well, mostly garlic bread, with even a law on the books that black people had to be out of town by sunset. My only contact then with black people was our cleaning woman who I liked very much. I doubt my parents were aware of the sunset law or if they did they just weren't very socially conscious at that time or at least not active about it.

I don't think they were motivated by prejudice as both my parents had much exposure to African Americans from their early childhoods, my mother's father being athletic, hanging at the gyms and bringing home his friends of all colors and my father from an entertainment family, one of his fondest childhood memories being on stage, sitting on family friend Fats Wallers' lap during an Apollo performance. So I'm sure they didn't pick a town to live in for its segregation policy. And I didn't even learn about the rule until I was an adult. I guess segregation was just considered normal by many back then as odd as it seems now.

As odd as it seems that there are still people now who think it is normal that gay people don't have human rights, though you'd think consciousness would have advanced some since then.

After my parents divorced, we moved from white bread world to the Caribbean where the population was probably 95% black 5% white. Oddly, there was nothing odd to me about that. I felt completely comfortable as even though we had lived in a segregated town and school during my childhood, that attitude never penetrated my family life. My family was always very respectful of people regardless of color or sexual orientation or any of that. I really lucked out there, raised by humanists, thank God.

So to go from no black people in town to mostly black people in town to rocks thrown in school was a little surprising. This is why you should always make friends with the strongest black guy you can find. So no one throws rocks at you (that's it, I have no other ulterior motive).

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First Integrated Prom Planned In Georgia (USA)