Cobb woman took on problem of segregated prom

But even McNair, who recently moved to Austell and teaches in the Henry County school district, couldn’t have guessed what Charleston High would be like. Nor did she ever imagine that she and the school would become the subjects of tonight’s HBO documentary, “Prom Night in Mississippi,” which airs at 9.

From day one, there was something unsettling about Charleston High. Although predominantly African-American, it was run by white administrators and a mostly white staff. Teachers gave her strange looks.

The first day of school, McNair, now 32, did what she’d always done. She told her students what she expected of them and a little bit about herself. She had a son. She grew up in West Point, Miss., about 30 miles from Starkville, where she attended Mississippi State University.

“Did you have an integrated prom?” one student asked McNair.

It was not an odd question at Charleston High. Mississippi integrated its public schools in 1970, but not once in the years since had Charleston ever had an integrated prom. Not in 1997 when actor Morgan Freeman first offered to pay for the dance and not in recent years. Whites had their proms. Blacks had theirs. Even when students went on field trips, McNair would learn, blacks and whites rode separate buses.

Had Mississippi changed?

Paul Saltzman, a Canadian filmmaker, had heard about Freeman’s offer to finance Charleston’s prom from one of McNair’s students.

When Freeman told him the offer was still good, Saltzman made another appeal to the school board.

“This time they accepted and we began to film,” he said.

Saltzman had spent the summer of 1965 in the Mississippi Delta working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. To him, segregated proms were nothing new. Montgomery County, Ga., for instance, had held one since 1971 when its schools were integrated.

Saltzman was curious about whether Mississippi had changed.

“I was very keen to tell this story because I believe that there isn’t a person on this planet without some prejudice, even if it’s a tiny, tiny bit,” he said.

Hard time at school

With McNair and 12 of her “select” theater students on board, Saltzman began filming.

McNair began to meet with trouble.

“Things started to change and I mean immediately,” she said.

The principal accused her of causing $10,000 in damage to the school after a group of students she’d recruited to paint a mural in her classroom left paint drippings in the hallway.

She was reprimanded for having her son on campus (he was at home); then came a second reprimand for defacing school property.

In the 4 1/2 months leading up to the prom, Saltzman followed students, teachers and parents.

Freeman addressed the student body.

Girls started to shop for dresses. Boys rented tuxedos. Racist attitudes flared.

Some white parents forbade their children to attend the integrated prom, insisting on a separate whites-only dance.

McNair, however, says she was raised to do what’s right, and an integrated prom was right. She saw the documentary as an opportunity for her students to shine. The prom began at 7:30 p.m. on April 19, 2008, and was “like stepping into a story book,” said McNair, who cried as she watched black students dancing with their white classmates.

“It was perfect,” she said.

McNair finished the school year, but her time at Charleston High would soon end.

She said she no longer felt safe there. She resigned and last June moved to Austell.

McNair said last week that she’d watched “Prom Night” three times already and planned to watch it again tonight, perhaps with a group of friends from her church.

“People talk about racism all the time,” she said wiping tears from her face. “When you live it, it’s totally different from seeing it on TV or in the movies. The impact is overwhelming.

“I’m glad the world will get to see it.”