Prom Night in Mississippi

Article Author name(s): Produced by Teaching Tolerance, a Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Partnership with Home Box Office and RTM Productions
Title of article: Prom Night in Mississippi
Title of journal: Teaching Tolerance
Date of publication: Fall 2009 (documentary from July 2009)
Volume of the journal: 36

http://www.tolerance.org/kit/prom-night-mississippi

Intended audience: Middle and high school age students

Key Points: Academy Award winning actor Morgan Freeman offered to personally pay for Charleston High School’s (in Mississippi) senior prom, under the condition that it not be segregated as it has been in the past. Although the school’s classrooms have been integrated for years, racism runs deep within the city, and parents and many students reacted strongly to the idea of a desegregated prom. Many students were forbidden to attend, and other embraced the unity.

Relevance: Tis prom season! Most high school and middle school students are infatuated with the idea of going to prom, and those younger students aspire to the day they will be allowed to go. I think this is an extremely relevant hook that Teaching Tolerance is using in order to express some very key information around race and segregation, and how these issues are very much relevant in their modern day worlds.