Race and Civil Rights

CULTURE BEAT: Prom night in black and white

By Desiree Evans
July 24, 2009 - I grew up in a small, rural town in southwest Louisiana. At the time I went to high school (and it's still the case today) black kids and white kids had separate proms. All the black kids went to the "official" school prom, in a streamer-filled high-school gymnasium, and all the white students threw their own separate prom across town in a party space paid for by their parents.