Georgia County To See First Integrated Prom

The New York Times (4/26, Brown, Subscription Publication) reported Wilcox County, Georgia, "is one of the last pockets in the country with racially segregated proms." However, students are organizing its first integrated prom this year. The organizers "have received an outpouring of support from across the country," and "the Wilcox County school board plans to vote this spring on making future proms official school events, which would prohibit racial segregation."

The Minneapolis Star Tribune (4/29, Leslie) reports that resident of Rochelle, Georgia "didn't much like it, being prodded to explain, over and over, that what outsiders might take for racism is just-the-way-it's-always-been," following the publicity from the integrated prom. Many white residents "say the town has been wrongly portrayed," noting that "a Latino boy attended this year's white prom as the date of a white girl" and that some of the school's dances are integrated.