Watch Prom Night in Mississippi For Free

It is a performances centric movie

As Good As It Gets

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This documentary clearly showed how racism is still prevalent in today's society. In a small Mississippi town, proms are still segregated despite the integrated class room. Morgan Freeman offers to pay for the prom if students choose to integrate it. When they do, all sorts of issues arise but they end up having fun at their senior prom. What parents say and do about it is astonishing and it shows that some places in America are still living in the past. Most kids were all for the integrated proms, however, some parents had strong opinions otherwise. The documentary opened my eyes about how racism and discrimination is still a prominent sociological issue we face in everyday life. It followed the lives of these average Mississippi teenagers through the course of their senior integrated prom and shed light on how these slower pace communities and certain socioeconomic factors contribute to how people think about race. I feel like the director could have included more kids' opinions as well as additional parents' to really show the vast amount of different views and beliefs on blacks. I did like how they showed where the kids lived and showed the different sides of a white vs black. However, I enjoyed the documentary and learned a lot about discrimination.

This documentary about this small town with just 415 students in high school that is 60% black and 40% white and has segregated proms every single year till 2008- one for black and one for white- hard to believe but it's true. Then, one day in 1997 an actor Morgan Freeman (a resident of Charleston since 1991) approached the school and offered to pay for the prom, provided it to be racially integrated. The school declined Freeman's offer. Then, 11 years later he goes back and offered again, and the school agreed to move forward with an integrated prom. So, the prom preparation starts. Over next four months as the seniors of Charleston High School prepare for their senior prom; the director/producer/writer of the documentary follows the group of senior students, both black and white. The students discuss segregation in Charleston and how they feel about it. The documentary also explores issues such as interracial relationships, and what the parents think about an integrated prom. The integrated prom is successful despite some parents' forbidding their children to attend it, and that a white only prom was held by some of the parents. Some of the students also said that some of their parents would threaten the black kids because they were friends with a white kid. In the end the white parents still had their lame white people only prom and the integrated prom went smoothly lots of people showed up. It seemed like more people were having fun at the integrated prom then the white prom. Some of the white students even had black students as their date like Jeremy and Brittany, happily together to this day. When someone asked Paul what happened after graduation, he said that Brittany and Jeremy still love each other and that no one is married yet. Not all of the students went to college, because most of the black were poor so they worked to get money for college. The white parents still have the white people only prom and the integrated prom is still happening. In 2010, the graduation rate was 68.8%. So it was fascinating and interesting and I would love to watch it again.

Several months before I watched it I listened to Morgan Freeman do an interview about this film. That interview was fantastic and it sparked my interest in the film. Now that I've seen the film, I think I actually got more out of listening to the interview. Although there were some interesting moments, there wasn't enough drama throughout to make me really want to keep watching. While, I am glad the film was made for the sake of exposing the kind of racism that still exists in some areas, it's not a film I would recommend to everyone. It was well made but could have been more concise. It's probably best used as a classroom tool to generate discussion.

Some prejudices never die. Take the case of the Charleston, Mississippi High School prom. Even though the school system was desegregated a long time ago, the senior class must deal with two different proms, one for whites, another one for blacks. Enter actor Morgan Freeman. He is a native of Charleston, but he left when he was six years old. Mr. Freeman brings an interesting proposal for the students that will be graduating in the 2008 school year: he will pay for the party as long as there is one prom that will bring all the students together for a last night of fun during the last days of their senior year.The students are basically receptive to the idea proposed by Mr. Freeman, yet, the white folks in town, decide to go on with their segregated party that proves to be a dismal failure. On the other hand, the integrated feast goes on without a hitch. This documentary deals with intolerance and ignorance in the heartland. Most whites in that part of the Deep South have kept their own views on the way they perceive relations between the two races. As a result, their biases are passed down to the children that grow up looking down on the kids they attend to school with. While the rest of the country does things differently, these folks in Charleston, as well, we are sure, as in other small communities, deprive the children of keeping an open mind about this issue.The documentary, written and directed by Paul Saltzman keeps a keen eye in the way the young people appear to be more adjusted than the adults.