The National Women’s Studies Association has a blog for students. Check it out!

Did anyone else see this article this morning? I literally double-taked this blurb I saw on the NPR homepage.

Born and bred in a liberal home in Midwestern Chicago, I guess I just cannot believe that something like Prom ISN’T integrated. At a public school, no less.

Mississippi School Holds First Interracial Prom

As far back as 1997, actor Morgan Freeman, a Charleston local, offered to pay for the dance if everyone could go. This year, officials finally accepted the offer. A Canadian film crew led by Paul Saltzman documented the event for the upcoming Prom Night in Mississippi.

A photographer working with the crew says people in Charleston didn’t question the segregated dances. But as the big night approached, the importance of the change became clear. Catherine Farquharson followed several kids as they washed their cars and had their hair done.

She describes one encounter in an African-American beauty parlor, in which an elderly woman who’d been part of the civil rights movement stopped in to see what the hubbub was about. The woman ended up giving an impromptu testimony about the history these young people were about to make. “It was almost like it didn’t occur to a lot of the kids, until the day of the prom, how important what was going on really was,” Farquharson reports.

Student Chasidy Buckley says that Charleston’s first interracial prom made for a happy and comfortable night. Some white parents wouldn’t let their kids go, and some insisted on holding a private prom for their kids. But mostly, Buckley says, students enjoyed themselves — even if they’d expected a boring formal.

“It was just magnificent,” Buckley says. “That night, when we stepped in that door, everybody just had a good time. We proved ourselves wrong. We proved the community wrong, because they didn’t think that it was going to happen.”

Buckley says the school has decided to host a prom next year, giving black and white kids another chance to dress up and step out. “It’s going to continue to go on in our school, and if it continues to go on in our school, then our community will continue to improve,” she says. “It’ll impact them, too, because once they see that blacks and whites can come together in school and have fun together, then they’ll see that the community can change, too.”

This is a recent letter I received from the Illinois Arts Alliance.

“On May 21, the Illinois House passed HB6429, a budget plan that would restore all of the $4.5 million cut from the Arts Council’s FY2008 budget and allocate an addition $2.6 million.

A few days later, on May 23, the Illinois Senate passed SB1130, a measure that would restore $3.5 million of $4.5 million cut from the Arts Council’s FY2008 budget.”

This is great organization for the arts in Chicago!

This is what Ra Joy, its Executive Director, had to say about the Arts in our own Prairiegrass State:

“The arts are the very fabric of Illinois and represent a powerful tool for attracting and uniting residents, strengthening our cultural heritage, stimulating innovation, and contributing an overall culture of excellence in our neighborhoods and schools.

To find out more about the Illinois Arts Alliance go to:

http://artsalliance.org

This article, in the Wall Street Journal, addresses the practice of “bodysnarking” (making comments about someone’s appearance). An interesting read.

We’ve been a little neglectful of the blog lately. For those of you out there, I’d like to direct your attention to a wonderful commentary from Peter Sagal at NPR about the sexism in the movie version of Horton Hears a Who. Very worth reading and sharing.