Turner County High School in Ashburn, Georgia will finally host an integrated prom. On April 21, Georgia students will for the first time attend a prom open to both black and white students.
Ashburn, located about 80 miles north of the Florida border, is home to 4,000 residents. Some 45 percent of the residents are black, while 45 percent of the residents are white. The ratio holds about the same for the high school's 456 students, and among the senior class the ratio of black and white students is almost even.
The high school has never held an official senior prom for all of its students instead; there have been two unofficial events: a black prom and a white prom.
Although everything will change at the end of this month, the school will combine the previously segregated dances into a single, tropical-themed prom in the school's newly built gymnasium for the entire senior class.
The event has come to fruition under the guidance of four elected senior-class officers, two black, two white, and a first-year high school principal. The first integrated senior prom will be called the "Breakaway," symbolizing the break from tradition.
Turner Principal Chad Stone said he was open to the idea when the four senior-class officers announced in September that they wanted to end the tradition of holding segregated proms.
The school's administration offers to provide financial support and a location for the event, under two conditions: The class officers and the student body must demonstrate genuine support for the event, and they must agree to a few reasonable prom policies.
After they agreed to the latter, it didn't take too much for the Class of 2007 to show Stone the shared sentiment.
"I just think this is a close-knit group of kids," Stone said. "Everybody here, white and black, this probably [is] as close knit a group as I've seen."
Stone believes the first integrated prom has come due to parents brining together the two sides who every day share classes, athletic fields and all the other experiences of high school in America.
"These are things that are going to be remembered as pretty special, and that's how we want to [be] remembered," Stone said. "We already go to school together -- let's start a tradition so that in 20 years from now, this is no big deal at all."
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