User Reviews

Saw this yesterday at our film festival, and was very impressed. The film studies the phenomenon of a racially integrated senior prom from several perspectives, mixing student interviews with footage of key events in their prom preparation, like buying dresses and confirming dates. The interviews achieve a happy mix of blunt candor with adolescent innocence, and one comes away with the notion that racism is not so much a yes-no status as a continuum along which everyone can be placed: some kids want to socialize with kids of other races, but would not date them; some parents work hard to prevent their children from interracial dating, but ultimately permit it. This is a film that is destined as a springboard for discussion; it certainly provoked a long talk among the crowd I saw it with.

This documentary about this small town with just 415 students in high school that is 60% black and 40% white and has segregated proms every single year till 2008- one for black and one for white- hard to believe but it's true. Then, one day in 1997 an actor Morgan Freeman (a resident of Charleston since 1991) approached the school and offered to pay for the prom, provided it to be racially integrated. The school declined Freeman's offer. Then, 11 years later he goes back and offered again, and the school agreed to move forward with an integrated prom. So, the prom preparation starts. Over next four months as the seniors of Charleston High School prepare for their senior prom; the director/producer/writer of the documentary follows the group of senior students, both black and white. The students discuss segregation in Charleston and how they feel about it. The documentary also explores issues such as interracial relationships, and what the parents think about an integrated prom. The integrated prom is successful despite some parents' forbidding their children to attend it, and that a white only prom was held by some of the parents. Some of the students also said that some of their parents would threaten the black kids because they were friends with a white kid. In the end the white parents still had their lame white people only prom and the integrated prom went smoothly lots of people showed up. It seemed like more people were having fun at the integrated prom then the white prom. Some of the white students even had black students as their date like Jeremy and Brittany, happily together to this day. When someone asked Paul what happened after graduation, he said that Brittany and Jeremy still love each other and that no one is married yet. Not all of the students went to college, because most of the black were poor so they worked to get money for college. The white parents still have the white people only prom and the integrated prom is still happening. In 2010, the graduation rate was 68.8%. So it was fascinating and interesting and I would love to watch it again.

Some prejudices never die. Take the case of the Charleston, Mississippi High School prom. Even though the school system was desegregated a long time ago, the senior class must deal with two different proms, one for whites, another one for blacks.

Enter actor Morgan Freeman. He is a native of Charleston, but he left when he was six years old. Mr. Freeman brings an interesting proposal for the students that will be graduating in the 2008 school year: he will pay for the party as long as there is one prom that will bring all the students together for a last night of fun during the last days of their senior year.

The students are basically receptive to the idea proposed by Mr. Freeman, yet, the white folks in town, decide to go on with their segregated party that proves to be a dismal failure. On the other hand, the integrated feast goes on without a hitch.

This documentary deals with intolerance and ignorance in the heartland. Most whites in that part of the Deep South have kept their own views on the way they perceive relations between the two races. As a result, their biases are passed down to the children that grow up looking down on the kids they attend to school with. While the rest of the country does things differently, these folks in Charleston, as well, we are sure, as in other small communities, deprive the children of keeping an open mind about this issue.

The documentary, written and directed by Paul Saltzman keeps a keen eye in the way the young people appear to be more adjusted than the adults.

Just saw the documentary last night. Am still slack-jawed at the fact that just LAST YEAR was a first integrated prom in any high school in this country. HOWEVER . . . I only just NOW figured it out -- it's actually pretty simple. Mr Freeman's initial thought that the kids would be happy about integrating the prom was depressingly undercut by the fact that many weren't -- and that even some of the most enlightened kids STILL WENT TO THE WHITES ONLY PROM!!! But, clearly, the fact that blacks so greatly outnumber the whites in the school means that NO WHITE KID STOOD THE CHANCE OF BEING PROM KING OR QUEEN. I'm sure that several had their hearts set on the crown their entire high school career. Pardon my cynicism, but I wouldn't be surprised if the anger at this little fact alone accounts for the mysterious naming of a white kid as valedictorian. I no longer consider this film to be depressing or complicated. It's just HIGH SCHOOL AS USUAL.