The seniors of Flint Northwestern High School were in agreement. The prom could be anywhere but Flint.
“We wanted to be somewhere different, see something different,” said Treveyon Allen, 19, who huddled with other students months ago to choose a spot.
So on a balmy Friday evening in May, 90 students boarded charter buses for a ride to Detroit, one hour away. They sang songs, snapped selfies and held hands with their dates. Some were so eager to arrive that they opened Google Maps on their phones, watching the blue dot as it crawled closer to their destination, a quadruple-decker riverboat.
“I’ve never been to Detroit,” said Treveyon, who was crowned prom king that night.
“Most of us haven’t been on a boat at all. That was a beautiful experience, to just get on a boat and say, ‘We’ve been here.’”
For students at Northwestern High, this prom was a chance to set aside anxieties about the city’s three-year-old water crisis, its poverty and its gun violence.
It also invited transformations. For the first time as a group, the senior class got dressed up in carefully chosen gowns, suits and glittering necklaces.
One female student used the prom as a chance to abandon an old grievance with an estranged family member, asking her to come over and help her get dressed before the evening. One senior said that as he walked onto the riverboat that night, he observed a change in his classmates. Maybe it was the formalwear, he thought, but everybody around him seemed to be acting older, more assured.
The night began, appropriately enough, with a promenade.
‘Like a fashion show’
In Flint, it is known as “the catwalk.”
In the late afternoon, prom-going students gather outside their high school on Flint’s North Side, a mostly African-American section of this city of 99,000. With family and friends in attendance, the promenade, a tradition with roots in 19th-century debutante balls, begins.
This school has had ups and downs. In April, administrators announced that Northwestern would lose its stand-alone athletic program next fall and merge with another school across town. But it has also had proud moments: Barack Obama chose the school as a perch to deliver a speech in the waning days of his presidency.
So many people show up for the catwalk each spring that police unfurl tape to separate the audience from the students.
“It’s like a fashion show,” said Leilani Clay, 17, a senior who is planning to attend Eastern Michigan University and hopes to open a dance studio someday. “It’s a bunch of yelling and screaming. You walk, you stop, and everybody wants to take your picture.”
Preparations for prom begin early. Some students at Northwestern High said they arranged their dates more than six months in advance. The most important next step is figuring out what to wear: Most couples choose a color theme and coordinate their ensembles.
The boys tend to favor vibrant, bright suits rather than traditional black-and-white tuxedos. Some girls, in the quest for perfection, get their dresses tailor-made.
“I feel like you can never be overdressed for prom,” said Destiny Lanehart, 18.
‘Everybody was acting different’
On the day of the prom, Corey Edwards, 18, had a nonstop schedule.
Pick up his freshly pressed suit from the dry cleaner. Stop by his great-grandfather’s house to borrow cufflinks, a set made of silver with a diamond in the center. Buy a corsage for his date, Ebony Wagner. Get a haircut.
Throughout the day, he sipped bottled water.
“It’s just part of life,” said Corey, whose family keeps extra bottled water in the backyard shed for washing hair, brushing teeth, boiling hot dogs for lunch. “We never even think of using the sink water.”
He is hoping to leave Flint’s problems behind him after the prom and graduation, when he can go off to college. First he plans to enroll in a college in Georgia, near Atlanta, and later, work in sports broadcasting.
“I’ve always wanted to leave Flint, ever since I got older and saw killings on the news,” he said. “The way my mom raised me, she didn’t want me to be like those kids.”
Students at Northwestern say they have shrugged off old gender traditions surrounding prom. Girls routinely ask boys, for one example. Corey was asked to the prom by Ebony, an on-and-off girlfriend.
It was Ebony who decided on their colors, silver and pink. But Corey kept one element of his outfit a surprise until she arrived.
“She was very happy about my shoes,” he said.
LaTisha Edwards, Corey’s mother, was there to see her son off, posing for selfies and inspecting his outfit.
She has given Corey her blessing to go away to college, though she is apprehensive about him leaving Michigan.
“I told her, I’m going to leave, and when I’m successful, I’m going to give back,” Corey said. “I’m going to fight just like we’re fighting now for our water.”
At the prom, Corey said that from the time he stepped onto the riverboat, he felt a change in his classmates.
Other than in church on Sundays, he had never seen people dressed up together. They slow-danced with their dates and ate roasted chicken and fettuccine Alfredo from the buffet.
His friends, so boisterous in their regular lives, “had kind of a professional attitude” at the prom.
“That’s the crazy thing about it – everybody was acting different,” he said. “It actually was nice. It was like we should just do it every day.”
‘They love me for who I am’
Ny Stovall, 18, had every part of her prom experience planned, down to the smallest detail.
A dressmaker who works from her home sewed the gown by hand. “When I was younger, I always knew what kind of dress I wanted to wear – a big, poufy, Cinderella kind of dress,” she said.
Ny’s cousin, Cameo Paschal, came over to help her get ready for the prom. They had been locked in a silent feud for close to a year, when Ny rebelled at what she called maternal meddling on Cameo’s part.
“I told her how I felt and why I hadn’t talked to her,” Ny said. “She said she understood, and she forgives me.”
In retrospect, Ny admits, she might have needed a little more parenting. She has spent a few stints in juvenile detention for repeatedly running away from home and violating the terms of her probation.
Now that she is on the cusp of adulthood, she and her family have become closer. They have accepted the fact that she is in a relationship with a woman, Christal Bowers-Ingram, her date for prom.
“I warned everybody ahead of time, if you don’t want to see me with a girl, then don’t come, because I don’t want the negative energy,” Ny said. “They understand and they don’t necessarily agree with it but they accept it. And they love me for who I am.”
Ny is determined to leave Flint. Her teachers at Northwestern have helped, encouraging students to go to college in the fall.
The prom lived up to her expectations.
“The best part of high school for me was probably prom,” said Ny. “It’s like a milestone. You know you’re close to being done with high school. Everybody dreams of going to prom.”
