Wilcox County’s racially segregated proms

**I wrote this story in April of 2009, as part of my requirements to fulfill my journalism degree at Columbia University. I didn’t want to let it quietly hibernate on my laptop through another prom season, so I’m posting it here. And just to be clear, this issue is not only present in the deep South. Throughout my research, I found recent (within the past decade) segregated proms scattered throughout the US, included a “Russians Only” prom in Brooklyn. I do think, at this point, Wilcox County holds the only remaining segregated prom–though my research is certainly not exhaustive.  **

United We Stand, Divided We Dance: Wilcox County Proms in Black and White

The classrooms at Wilcox County High in Rochelle, Georgia stand empty on a cool, sunny Thursday morning. Whitney Turner, a petite junior with a headful of tiny braids, chocolate skin and wide-set expressive eyes, shifts her weight and studies her feet. Her stiletto heels sink in the soft earth. She’s sandwiched between her identical twin Brittney and their friend Regan Beale. When Whitney turns to survey the crowd, Beale’s long blond hair brushes her cheek. The whole school, black and white, has turned out. Everyone loved Jay McDuffie.

Brittney clings to Whitney and sniffs, swiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Beale stares stoically ahead, yanking at the hem of her baby-doll dress as Britt Peavy, pastor of Pitts Church of God, says, “Jay was always laughing and joking. He wouldn’t want y’all to mope around.”

On cue, Michael McDuffie and Mac McKinney, both 19, crank their engines and, with their trucks still in park, slam on the gas. The quick, satisfying bursts are their own eulogy to the lean, blue-eyed 17-year-old who had been Michael’s brother and McKinney’s best friend—the boy who lived in his John Deere hoodie, loved souped-up trucks and massive parties and four days ago, slammed his Chevy into a tree at 80 mph, ending his life on Rochelle’s infamous S-curves.

As the final roar descends into silence, punctuated by muffled weeping, Whitney thinks about Jay’s father, Police Chief Michael McDuffie.  An hour ago in the high school gym, he had begged his son’s peers—“Please slow down.” February 8, 2009, in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Chief McDuffie had discovered his son’s mangled body.

Thoughts on Caster Semenya

I’m outraged by the continued mishandling of the Caster Semenya situation–by sports officials, by her coaches, by her fellow athletes and jealous peers and by the media that relentlessly airs each evolving (and often unconfirmed) detail of Semenya’s personal health information–information that should be considered as confidential as that of any civilian. Why is the international community singling out an African woman, essentially punishing her for her talent and for not fitting some Eurocentric standard of feminine beauty? In fact, why gender-categorize sports at all, if what it really comes down to is the competitive boost provided by high testosterone levels? Testosterone levels vary among women, even women with standard XX genotypes. Why don’t all athletes  undergo routine testosterone screenings? If categories were based on testosterone rather than gender, some self-identifying female athletes might end up competing against primarily men and most likely these situations would make news, but they would not have the vicious, personal nature of the gossip-laden attacks currently launched against Semenya.

This is a civil rights issue above all else. Semenya’s rights have been violated and beyond that, the implications of this case show the continued vulnerability of anyone that doesn’t fit into our narrow, socially constructed concept of gender. We need to be better educated about  intersexuality and the complexities of both biological gender and gender identity. Our institutions operate via a binary that inescapably, absolutely links gender with biology, but even as we mobilize this binary,  nature defies it. If your gender and your biology don’t match, society requires your attempt to “pass,” to at least present the appearance of a match. Otherwise you are viewed as something less, maybe even less than human. Maybe only 4% of the population doesn’t fall into these binaries. But if only 4% of the South’s population had suffered under Jim Crow laws, would overturning these laws have been any less vital?

Way Down South in Dixie

When we first stepped up to the plywood building, off some unfamiliar highway somewhere between Starkville and Montpelier, I was psyched to be going to a real Mississippi roadhouse.

Keep reading here.

New York Premiere of Prom Night in Mississippi

Prom Night in Mississippi is showing at 6:30 p.m. Friday at BAMcinemaFEST. Although the film is slated for HBO at some point this summer, the BAM premiere could be New Yorkers’ only chance to see it on the big screen.

I was lucky enough to catch the film at Sundance 2009 and to have the privilege of getting to know Jessica Shivers and Chasidy Buckley, the film’s two charismatic leading ladies. What follows is my own brief documentary of the events directly before and after the film’s debut.

For more on Prom Night in Mississippi’s Sundance premiere, check out my Jackson Free Press blog.