Integration finally gets a dance card at Georgia prom

Under the scrutiny of national media, the integrated prom is unearthing ancient fault lines in a town otherwise so peaceful that orange-garbed county prisoners get their visiting hour on the front stoop of the jail. At one point, a frustrated student hisses at an unwelcome reporter: "It's just a prom!"

Still, the dance is talk of a town whose brick square has a monument to "our boys in gray." In this tradition-conscious county of 8,800, where farms grow everything from watermelons to onions and supermarkets still have hand-scrawled signs, an older generation seems almost resigned to the evening's portent. Black and white teens are an innocent generation, says Ruth Turk, an octogenarian who remembers her doctor father treating wounded race rioters in nearby Darien County, in the 1930s. "This generation, they've never seen no race riots up close," she says.

But their efforts of unification threaten closely held sensibilities in both the white and black communities, Ms. Turk continues. What few outsiders seem to realize, she says, is that there's a difference between voluntary segregation and discrimination.

"I just think they'd be happier if they kept them separate," she says. "But if they're the ones who want to do it, I'm sure they'll get along."

Turk says she told her granddaughter, Melissa, a junior, to follow her heart, hold her chin high – and "be a lady."

Locals admit that while there is some resistance to the idea of a mixed prom, it tends to be limited to an older generation.

At the Taylor farm store, one employee, like many in town, is reluctant to comment on the touchy subject. His buddy later whispers: "Don't get him started. I've got to work with him the rest of the afternoon."

Still, economic buoyance for blacks and a centuries-long shared Southern existence has all but worn down the teeth of social segregation, says Mr. Byram.

"Often, it's not that we want to necessarily go out to dinner or marry someone, but we do want to go to school together or work together," he says.

"Over time, people just began to realize how similar they were and maybe this wasn't such a big deal."

Besides checking out each other's dance moves, it turns out there are more mundane advantages for students of both races to having just one prom. For one thing, it's made it possible to plan the swankiest Taylor County do yet. Students found that photographers and other vendors were more ready to deal with the larger group.

Still, it's been a challenge to please everyone. After 30 years, the two proms had taken on distinctly different airs: The white prom a bit diffident, not as much dancing, with everybody breaking up into cliques for the "après-prom" parties; black prom-goers, meanwhile, tended to throng together and keep dancing all night, as a group.

"I never really knew what all went on at their proms," says Christina, a recent grad who is going to her third prom with her senior boyfriend. "All I know is that our prom pictures all look the same."

The theme for the prom is, "Make It Last Forever." Yet all the attention over the affair has, in fact, put next year's prom in question. "The rumor now is that they may not do it again next year," says Ms. Robinson, the senior. "Friday's prom is a real test, to see if it'll work."

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