Prom Night in Mississippi (2009)

• 73%
• 2009
• Documentary
• Paul Saltzman

In 1997, Academy Award winning actor, Morgan Freeman, who lives in the Charleston, Mississippi community, offered to fund the first-ever integrated Senior Prom in the history of Charleston's one high school. His offer was ignored. In 2008, Morgan offered again... the East Tallahatchie County School Board accepted. In this town of 2,300 people, its high school of 415 black and white students has, to this day, always had separate proms: one black, one white prom. Our film follows the Charleston High senior class of 2008 preparing and attending their historic, first integrated prom, in the context of strong emotions, traditions, and conflict inherent in race relations in the community, and in the deep south. Some of the white parents maintained their whites-only prom.