Prom delayed 50 years, The class of 1963 crowded in a rectangle on the dance floor, the memories of high school fresh on their minds as the band played in a sea of pink and blue hues.
Aretha Franklin. Etta
James. The Temptations. Just what you would expect to be playing at a
1960s prom. Yet the song that drew the most bodies to the dance floor
was "The Wobble."
Until this hip-hop song emptied the chairs, it felt as if the auditorium had been transported back 50 years.
But it's 2013, and
despite the full-court nostalgia for the 1960s, that decade was one of
the most difficult times in Birmingham's history.
Societal tensions over
race were so high in 1963 that the city canceled senior prom for five of
the city's segregated high schools for blacks.
Today, a half century has
passed since the seminal civil rights protests that changed Birmingham
and plotted a path for the nation away from segregation and toward equal
rights.
Just like that path, the healing process has been a long one.
The Historic 1963 Prom, held Friday and hosted by the city of Birmingham, closed one chapter for these Alabamans.
'A tension-filled city'
Growing up in Birmingham
in the 1950s, Earnestine Thomas knew the rules of this segregated city.
At a restaurant, she could pay in the front, but had to walk around the
back to get her food from a cook. She could shop only in certain
places; there were neighborhoods that she knew not to visit.
"As a child, I
recognized that it was unfair, but didn't understand that there were
laws propping (segregation) up," she said as she waited for a hair
appointment before Friday's prom.
She treated herself to a
hair styling before donning a lavender dress with a sequined jacket and
matching shoes. Lavender was a fitting color, she said, not just
because it is her favorite, but because it was the school color at
Parker High School.
It was a day of celebration that she and her classmates were denied in 1963.
Segregation in
Birmingham permeated everything, down to the Bibles that judges used to
swear witnesses in -- there was one holy book for white witnesses and
another for black witnesses.
Yet members of the class
of 1963 recall having the same struggles as any other teenagers, then
and today -- parents' rules, scrounging enough money for dates, finding
reliable transportation.
As often is the case
when people witness a historic period, many black high school students
in Birmingham in 1963 did not recognize the moment that was upon them.
Years of advocacy by
civil rights leaders had successfully chipped away at segregation, and
students pushed the boundaries -- as much out of teenage rebellion as a
sense of justice.
Prom delayed 50 years news Via edition.cnn
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