news-record.com

The HBO documentary “Prom Night in Mississippi,” is at once a heartwarming and disquieting look at the state of race relations in “post-racial America.”

The film, which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and premiered on HBO Monday night, involves an attempt by actor Morgan Freeman (who played God, no less, in the movies) to end the tradition of separate black and white proms at a high school in his hometown of Charleston, Miss.

Freeman seeks to accomplish this by offering to pay for a mixed prom.

On his first attempt, in 1997, he was turned down.
The second time, in 2008, the school board, and most of the senior class at Charleston High, said yes.

The film chronicles what happened next, through interviews with students, administrators and parents, black and white.

The interviewees appear candid and honest, even about the prickliest issues.

One of the most memorable is a white father, a self-described “redneck” who opposes interracial dating but whose daughter dates a black boy and will accompany him to the prom.

While the man grudgingly allows the two to date, he does not like it and makes it clear that he hopes they grow apart when the boyfriend goes away to college.

Another is the lone white player on the basketball team, who intends to go to both proms, and who winds up taking two dates.

Another is a black girl who believes the position of valedictorian was awarded, unfairly, to a white student instead of her.

And still another is the white principal, a former coach who says he couldn’t wait to recover from major heart surgery to be back with his kids at school.

The upshot of Freeman’s gambit, without spoiling it for you, is that there is a mixed prom — but some white parents ban together and hold their own prom anyway, where no black people are allowed.
They refuse to be interviewed on camera, or to allow the documentary crew into the whites-only prom.

And they hire a lawyer to explain why.

If they’re featured in the film, he says, squirming at the irony, people will think the parents are racist.

I won’t say more, except that the film leaves me more hopeful than discouraged.

But we’ve still got a long way to go.