WHEN TO WATCH
“Southern Rites” premieres at 9 p.m. Monday on HBO.
It will also air at 10 a.m. and 5:15 p.m. May 21; 10:30 a.m. May 25; and 1:30 p.m. May 26.
ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.
“Southern Rites” isn’t the first HBO documentary to examine segregated proms in the South, but I hope it will be the last.
I hope that this is the end of separate but equal proms everywhere. I hope that this piece of our racial history is past even though Faulkner said that “the past isn’t even past.” I hope that all those who have benefited from segregation here and across the country will begin to question why so many of the privileges they enjoy are reserved just for them. And I hope our politicians and news pundits will finally stop feeding people’s fears, taking advantage of their ignorance.
On May 13, I joined a crowd of several dozen people of mixed races and sexes at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights for the debut of the film, which premieres at 9 p.m. Monday on HBO.
The 90-minute documentary by photographer Gillian Laub, which was executive produced by John Legend, was as sad as it was spellbinding. Sad because it’s hard to believe that even in the midst of protests over the deaths of unarmed black men in recent months that any public school could’ve held separate proms just a few years ago. And spellbinding because no sooner than it opens, it catches you by the heartstrings and drags you through the mess we call race relations.
More than once, I heard sniffles in the audience. Watched as women wiped tears from their faces. Listened to the incredulous laughter.
I graduated from high school in 1975 in Mississippi. I never questioned why our prom was segregated; it just was. And until about 10 years ago, so too was every class reunion.
“Southern Rites” tells the story of Montgomery County High School’s first integrated prom and the shooting death of Justin Patterson that once again divides the town along already-fractured racial lines.
Laub said a letter from one of the school’s students, Ana Rich, to Spin magazine in 2000, pleading for someone to come and document the segregated proms, gave birth to the documentary.
When she visited Mount Vernon, Ga., in 2002, Laub said she was haunted by what she witnessed: a seemingly friendly integrated town that also had such overt displays of racism. The homecoming ballot had two columns: one for a white queen, one for a black queen. She remained in touch with Rich over the years and in 2008 returned to photograph the still-segregated proms.
“I decided photographs weren’t capturing all of the complexities of this town going through transition,” she said. “There was progress and then a tragedy happened that put this in a whole new direction.”
Just as students were preparing for their first integrated prom at Montgomery County High, Norman Neesmith, a white man, was charged with murder in the death of 22-year-old Justin Patterson, a black father of two. It is against this backdrop that Calvin Burns is running to become the town’s first black sheriff.
The film’s debut on May 13 came just as metro Atlanta’s prom season, an American rite of passage, draws to a close.
Although racially segregated proms are part of a long tradition in many Southern towns, more and more communities have sought change in recent years.
In 1997, you may or may not recall, actor Morgan Freeman offered to cover the cost if a Charleston, Miss., school board would hold an integrated prom. It wasn't until 2008 that his offer was accepted, and soon thereafter Canadian director Paul Saltzman moved to the Mississippi Delta town to document how preparations for the dance might shake up traditions and raise fears.
Saltzman’s efforts became the subject of another HBO documentary that aired in 2009 titled “Prom Night in Mississippi.”
Perhaps one of the most jarring realities of “Southern Rites” were that the events occurred less than a decade ago and that despite murder and six other charges brought against him in the shooting death of Justin Patterson, Neesmith spent only a year in a detention center for involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct.
Patterson, who’d been invited to Neesmith’s home by his adoptive daughter, was gunned down as he bolted from the premises. His younger brother, Sha’von, who was with him at the time, was not injured.
When Neesmith reported the incident, a dispatcher asked him who had he shot. “It was just a black boy,” Neesmith said.
That sent me reeling, remembering a parody of long-ago white attitudes in Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” in which he writes:
“Good gracious. Anybody hurt?”
“No’m killed a nigger.”
“Well, it’s lucky because sometimes people do get hurt.”
Deborah Patterson told me had it not been for Laub, her son’s death might have never gotten the attention it deserved.
“Her courage and compassion to tell Justin’s story will help raise awareness about the injustices that still exist,” she said.
Laub said she hopes the film honors Justin’s memory and that viewers will use it as a teaching tool.
”It doesn’t give any tidy answers,” she said after the showing. “It opens up more questions.”
And it’s proof Faulkner was right. “The past isn’t even past.” But when it comes to issues of race, I hope that one day soon it will be.
