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PromFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaA typical gathering, with boys in tuxedos, and girls in dresses with corsages on their wrists.Decorating for prom, students and student advisers put finishing touches on a ballroom at a banquet hall.In the United States, and increasingly in the United Kingdom and Canada, a promenade dance, most commonly called a prom, is a semi-formal (black tie) dance or gathering of high school students. This event is typically held near the end of the senior year (the last year of high school). Proms figure greatly in popular culture and are major events among high school students. High school juniors attending the prom may call it "junior prom" while high-school seniors may call it "senior prom". In practice, this event may be a combined junior/senior dance.At a prom, a Prom King and Prom Queen may be revealed. These are honorary titles awarded to students elected in a school-wide vote prior to the prom, and seniors are usually awarded these titles.[1]Other students may be honored with inclusion in a "Prom Court." The selection method for a Prom Court is similar to that of HomecomingQueen/Princess, King, and Court. Inclusion in a Prom Court may be a reflection of popularity of those students elected and their level of participation in school activities, such as clubs or sports.[2][3]The Prom Queen and Prom King may be given crowns to wear. Members of the Prom Court may be given sashes to wear and photographed together.[4]Similar events take place in many other parts of the world. In Australia and New Zealand, the terms school formal, and ball are most commonly used for occasions equivalent to the American prom, and the event is usually held for students in senior years, although the bestowing of the regal titles rarely, if ever, occurs. Many schools hold a formal graduation ball for finishing students at the end of the year in place of or as well as a formal. In Ireland a debutante ball or Debs may also be held. In Poland high schools organize a "studniówka". The term "prom" is becoming more common in the UK and Canada because of the influence of American films and television shows.In the United StatesHistoryProm danceIn the early days of high school proms, the nighttime dance served a function similar to a debutante ball. Early proms were times of firsts: the first adult social event for teenagers; the first time taking the family car out after dark; the first real dress-up affair; and so forth. Proms also served as a heavily-documented occasion, similar to a milestone event such as first communion or a wedding, in which the participants were taking an important step into a new stage in their lives. In earlier days, the prom may have also served as an announcement of engagement for the “best couple” after the prom court had been crowned and recognized.While high school yearbooks did not start covering proms and including prom pictures until the 1930s and 1940s, historians, including Meghan Bretz, believe proms may have existed at colleges as early as the late 19th century. The journal of a male student at Amherst College in 1894 recounts an invitation and trip to an early prom at neighboring Smith College for women. The word prom at that time may just have been a fancy description for an ordinary junior or senior class dance, but prom soon took on larger-than-life meaning for high school students.Proms worked their way down incrementally from college gatherings to high school extravaganzas. In the early 20th century, prom was a simple tea dance where high school seniors wore their Sunday best. In the 1920s and 1930s, prom expanded into an annual class banquet where students wore party clothes and danced afterwards. According to Jackie Blount, during the McCarthy era "schools became implemented curricula intended to keep youth sexually straight. In effect, schools became fundamentally important agencies in the nationwide campaign to fight homosexuality." This attitude further promoted heteronormative practices such as naming a prom king and prom queen, requiring strict gender conformity in dress, etc.As Americans gained more money and leisure time in the 1950s, proms became more extravagant and elaborate, bearing similarity to today’s proms. The high school gym may have been an acceptable setting for sophomore dances (soph hop), but junior prom and senior balls gradually moved to hotel ballrooms and country clubs. Competition blossomed, as teens strove to have the best dress, the best mode of transportation, and the best looking date. Competition for the prom court also intensified, as the designation of “prom queen” became an important distinction of popularity. In a way, prom became the pinnacle event of a high school student’s life, the ultimate dress rehearsal for a wedding.Today, prom continues to be a notable event in the social climate of high schools. Popular movies and novels attest to the importance of prom themes, prom dates, and prom queens. In some areas, the traditions of prom are not as rigid as they used to be, with some areas allowing individuals or groups to attend instead of couples. In 1975 U.S. First Daughter Susan Ford held her prom in the East Roomof the White House.TerminologyUsage of the term “prom” is becoming more common and appears to be a colloquial and regional practice. Formal English usage suggests "Prom" is a noun and should be preceded by an article although it often is not in practice."Prom" is a shortened version of promenade.AttireGirl in formal prom attire, United States, 1950sBoys usually dress in black or white formal wear, regardless of the time of the event, sometimes paired with ties or bow ties with vests, in some cases in colors matching their date’s dress. Most are rented from stores that specialize in formal wear rentals.Girls wear traditional ladies' dresses or evening gowns and adorn themselves with ladies’ jewelry such as earrings and a necklace. Traditionally girls wear perfume, and make-up such as eyeshadow, lipstick and blush. Girls also wear a corsage, given to them by their dates, and girls give boys matching boutonnières to be worn on their lapels. Some couples want to match their dates dress color to their tie or suit. Some fashion houses within the industry have a special focus in the prom and evening wear sector.Logistics and traditionsGirl beside a limousine before PromProm attendees may be limited by their schools to be juniors or seniors and guests under age 21.Before prom, girls typically get their hair styled, often in groups as a social activity at a salon. Prom couples then gather at a park, garden, or their own and their dates’ houses for single and/or group photographs. Prom attendees may rent limousinesor party busesto transport groups of friends from their homes to the prom venue: a banquet hall or school gymnasium. Some schools host their proms at hotel ballrooms or other venues where weddings typically take place. The dance itself may have a band or DJ. At prom, a meal may be served. The cost of prom in the United States averaged $1078 per family in 2012 and $1139 in 2013.Some high schools allow only the graduating class (Seniors) to have a prom. Some schools also allow grade 11 (Juniors) to have a prom, and select high schools even have proms for Freshmen and Sophomores. In some cases there is a combined Junior/Senior prom. Some American high schools and colleges that do not allow school-sponsored dances will host a Junior/Senior prom as a banquet instead of a dance. Typically, students still dress in formal attire and attend as couples. More and more colleges are hosting proms in recent years, usually as fundraisers for campus organizations such as Ballroom Dance groups, fraternities/sororities, or other organizations. In recent years, American teens have started asking celebrities or famous models to their Proms.Post PromAfter the prom, parents or a community may host a “prom after-party” or “afterglow” or “post-prom” at a restaurant, entertainment venue, or a student’s home. Other traditions often include trips to nearby attractions, such as amusement parks, regional or local parks, or family or rented vacation houses. Some of these post-prom events are chaperoned and some are unsupervised. Many Post Proms (After Prom Events) are at the school, and involve bringing entertainment such as interactive games, artists, and other entertainers to the school.In the United KingdomStudents and their parents in the prom night, EnglandIn the United Kingdom prior to the 2000s, many secondary schools held a "Summer Ball" to celebrate the end of term, and/or "Leavers Ball" to celebrate the end of schooling, but usually this did not have the cultural or social significance of the US-style Prom. From the 1970s there had also been a tradition of "School Discos", which were semi-formal events held at various times of the year, in particular during the Christmas period, though not all secondary schools would allow such events or "do's".During the 2000s, school "Proms" have become common at UK schools, apparently due to the influence of US TV showsThe Daily Telegraphreported in 2012 that:“elaborate 'passing out' celebrations for Year 11 students (aged 15–16) and Year 13 (aged 17–18) have become a cultural phenomenon, stoking passions and rivalries, and refashioning the sense of what a school party should be. More than 85 per cent of schools in Britain hold school Proms, which range from no-frills dinners in school halls to tailor-made extravaganzas in five-star hotels with such extras as ice- cream vans and photo booths.”Schools in England, Wales and Northern Ireland predominantly hold their Prom, or "School Formal", at the end of secondary education in Year 11 (ages 15/16) and the end of Sixth Form (aged 18), for those who have continued school.In Scotland it is usually only held at the end of S6 (ages 17/18) because all high schools in Scotland have pupils up to age 18 years, whereas elsewhere in the UK many students have to go to college to study for A-Levels. Proms are usually held in June, after the end of year exams. At Scottish formal events, boys usually wear kilts (kilts are also often seen in the other Celtic regions) and Highland dress outfitters often sell out in an area around this time of year due to demand from school events. Also in Scotland it is customary for traditional Scottish country dancing (part of the curriculum of all secondary schools) to be included.Related social gatherings elsewhereAfricaIn Egypt, private schools have proms similar to ones held in the United States but with slight differences. The prom is held for a maximum of 3 hours, where teachers attend and enjoy some time with their students. Then there is the "after-prom", where no teachers or parents are allowed, during that time, the real party begins with all the students dancing and enjoying their time. The after prom can continue to 4 am and 5 am.In South Africa, the equivalent of the American prom is the Matric Dance, taking place during the matriculation (i.e., final) year of high school (12th grade). It takes place towards the end of the third quarter, shortly before the spring break, after which the matriculation examinations commence. It usually takes the form of a formal dinner and dance. In most schools, the 11th grade class is responsible for arranging the event. Sometimes teachers and parents also attend.In Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, and Tanzania most private schools with expatriates have proms or “end of year socials.”In Zambia, private schools have a "leavers' dance/dinner" that is planned out by the grade 11 class and takes place on the Saturday after the Friday of their graduation ceremony. The dance is planned for the grade 12 class as well as the upper sixth form class and is normally done the 1st Friday after both of the classes are done writing their A Level and IGCSE examinations. The dinner begins at 7pm and the grade 11 class pose as the servers as well as the entertainment throughout the duration of the dinner. The dinner ends at midnight and is followed by the "after party" which is celebrated at another venue (usually a club) with no parents and no teachers. Costs for renting out the venue are covered by selling tickets to outsiders and the party is usually planned by the graduating classes themselves.AsiaIn Afghanistan there is a lunch party organized by the graduating students and called "graduation party." This is mostly seen in the university level graduation after the 16th class with a bachelor's degree, this day all the University seniors, faculty members and professors are invited as honors. There is no mingling of males and females due to strict adherence to the Islamic codes.In Hong Kong, prom culture is inherited from the western countries and is generally called ball, such as Christmas Ball. This usually takes place during Christmas and Summer Break. This is more popular in the secondary education stage rather than in universities. Schools, apart from international schools, holding proms are usually single-sex school where normally the Student Unions in the schools will cooperate each other in organizing the event. In recent years, more and more individual unions got united and formed different student unions associations so as to organize large-scale events including large joint-school proms. Except those proms within the academic field, there are also adult proms for charity yearly where celebrities and government officers always go to these functions.In India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Nepal, the equivalent to some extent is a farewell party or farewell gathering. The outgoing students are given a warm send-off by the junior students and staff. All the seniors are felicitated with souvenirs and superlatives are given awards. There are also couple dances due to influence of American culture and movies in India.In Israel, high school graduation parties usually combine a play and a humble ceremony, followed by a dance party. In the past years, influenced by American culture, more and more graduates decide to hold a private graduation party similar to the American prom, with dress code, prom dates, limousines, and prom kings or queens, although usually not supported by the school.In Lebanon, proms are held after the graduation ceremony at night. They are usually held at hotels with a formal dress code, prom dates, rented cars and, occasionally, prom kings and queens.In Singapore, proms are held at the near end of a senior year for secondary schools. Proms are normally held after the final examinations of all senior students before graduating.In Malaysia, proms are gaining in popularity, especially in the bigger cities. However, these gatherings are usually organized by students, and the school administration is not involved.In Pakistan, there is a farewell dinner or farewell function that takes place at the end of the college academic year. Particularly in A-Levels people may bring a prom date and students dress in formal attire. Girls are given a corsage by their Prom Dates and the event ends with a photography session with the Graduating batch.In the Philippines, proms are popular in high schools. Prom usually takes place in the junior and senior years of high school, which is normally around February or March. Proms are commonly known as “JS Prom”, or, junior–senior prom. Conversely, if a high school has separate dances for juniors and seniors, the term "prom" is reserved for the juniors, and the dance for the seniors is called a "graduation ball" (often abbreviated as "grad ball" or simply "ball".) The associated student body generally organizes the event. Usually a prom king and queen are chosen. The basis for the king and queen judgment is the beauty and the fashion of the nominee, not the popularity.In Vietnam, the equivalent to the prom is called liên hoan cuối năm. Some schools hold their liên hoan cuối năm at restaurants. But, majority of schools prefer simple "tea parties" with snacks and soft drinks inside their classrooms. In the high schools at rural countrysides, they don't celebrate at all. Unlike other countries, the students don't dress up in fancy dresses or tuxedos. Sometimes, they just simply wear school uniform to the tea parties.EuropeThis section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)AlbaniaIn Albania, "mbrëmja e maturës", as graduation night, is the event held at the end of the senior year. Every school organizes it independently and the event usually takes place in May. Ceremonially it is very similar to prom nights in the United States.Czech RepublicIn the Czech Republic, the last year in Gymnasium is celebrated with maturitní ples (“graduation ball”). This ball takes place before exams are taken, usually in January or February, the traditional season for balls during the Fasching (e.g., List of balls in Vienna). Normally, balls are formal but modern elements are included, too. The students invite their parents, other relatives and friends to come to the ball with them. The balls usually have a theme and the classes perform choreographed dance routines at the beginning or during the evening. The students also receive a ribbon. It's common that various artists are invited to perform at the ball, ranging from fireshow performers to famous celebrities. At the midnight, the classes perform "midnight surprise performance" – typically some sort of funny act. Sometimes several schools organize a joint event. The income is often used to finance a collective voyage of the students after the exams.BulgariaIn Bulgaria, the ball is called abiturientski bal and is held at the end of 12th grade, when you are aged 18/19. Preparations for the ball begin at the end of the 11th grade, because students are supposed to organize the whole event. It is celebrated in May, mainly on the 23rd, 24th or 25th, after finishing exams. Students can bring a date to the event which is usually held in a restaurant or a club. Usually, before the main event there is a big gathering in front of the high school’s building, where graduates count to 12 (as in 12 grades) and take photos with each other before going to the restaurant called izprashtane (“dispatchment”). At the main event in the restaurant/hotel, there is music, usually pop and retro. Students are free to dance with whomever they want, even if they have come with a date. There is usually an afterparty at a dance club. Some people even organize a second afterparty. After the prom night, students usually go to an excursion together for 3 to 5 days. The popular destinations are the Black sea coast and Turkey. The event is often associated with excess in drinking, drugs, sex and lavish nouveau-riche style of dressing and parading (there are families that would spend as much as a year's salary on their son or daughter' s night). The media regularly criticize it, deploring decadence of morals.BeneluxIn Belgium, as well as in some parts of the Netherlands, senior students celebrate their last 100 days of high school with a special day called Chrysostomos or 100-dagen feest (“100-days party”). Tradition states that on this winter day, seniors are allowed to pull pranks on their teachers and fellow students. Some schools handle a theme as dresscode, while others go for the traditional outfit: blue jeans, a black cotton jacket, a black hat (with a red or blue ribbon) and a whistle around the neck. Some even paint their faces and some seniors also carry a spray can (shaving cream or other fluids) to “attack” the non-seniors with. A noisy march through town is also part of the gig. Later during the day, students perform an act at school, usually a silly show involving school or a parody. In the evening, students head to a rented club to party. This involves dancing, singing and lots of beer to get a taste of fraternity life. Sometimes even teachers join the party to show that they too have a wild side. In the Netherlands, households where a child who has passed their high school exams often hang the student's backpack on a flagpole which is attached to the front of the house.Former YugoslaviaIn Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and the Republic of Macedonia, matursko veče (maturalna večer and maturska večer), as graduation night, is the event held at the end of the senior year. It is similar to prom night in the United States. In Croatia, it is sometimes held in January or February, as in Austria.DenmarkIn Denmark, the prom is called galla and takes place before the exams begin. The word galla refers to the dress code which is long dresses for the women and suits for the men. The prom in Denmark is well known for keeping the traditional dance Les Lanciers, where the third graders of high school (the seniors) start the whole dance, then the 1st and 2nd graders join later on (the high school, called "gymnasium" in Denmark, is three years).EstoniaIn Estonia, the equivalent of the prom is often called Saja päeva ball. The event takes place 100 days prior to the graduation and may be organized with several schools altogether. Students can dance but other events may be involved, too, besides ball room dancing. The clothes are much the same kind as in proms of other countries.FinlandIn Finland, the equivalent of the prom is called vanhojen tanssit (senior ball). The event is held in February when third-year high school students (the abi) end regular classes in order to prepare for their final abitur exams, and the second year students become the oldest in the school. For the remainder of the school year, the second year students are called vanhat ("the old", or " the seniors"). For the ball, the students learn 10–15 formal dances, mostly old ballroom dances such as the mazurkaor a polonaise. In the past, the style was to dress in an old-fashioned way, but these days the attire is similar to U.S. proms.FranceCouple of students in ParisIn France, high school students have only recently experienced prom. On June 27, 2013, more than 300 students in Paris, France held a prom. Event planning company White-Tie-Affair partnered up with multiple local companies to host the “Solidarity Prom Ball” charity gala. Food, drinks, venue, limousine as well as gift bags were sponsored by the different companies and provided for the students for free. On top of that, famous French music groups Psy4 de la Rime and Alibi Montana were the guest performance of the evening. All proceeds from the students’ entrance fee were donated to Donnons Leur Une Chance, a French non-profit organization that will help realize educational projects.GermanyIn Germany (and Austria), students celebrate their graduation from high school, or Gymnasium, with an Abifeier (from the graduation certificate or Abitur) or Maturaball (in Austria the graduation exam is called Matura). In Germany the events are informal and usually contain a series of student-organized activities that tend to make fun of teachers, sometimes with an extended hagiography about the favorite teacher. In Austria the Maturaball is formal and can be seen as a synergy of proms and cotillions and often are highlights of the regional ball season (between November and the end of Carneval) referencing the glamour of the great ball tradition of the former Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. More like the prom is the German Abiball, that follows the official graduation ceremony. Here the students usually wear suits and ball gowns. The Abiball often follows a certain order with a welcome, introductions, an award ceremony for students and sometimes an extended demonstration of all of the artistic outpourings of the students and staff. This is followed by a band (sometimes the school's own band, if there is any) or a DJ playing music, usually starting with a waltz before moving on to other dancing. Alcohol is available at these events since the legal drinking age in Germany is 16 (for beer and wine), and most graduating students are 18 or older.HungaryIn Hungary, students receive a ribbon to mark the beginning of the preparation for their graduation. Students receive this ribbon at a ball called "szalagavató", meaning the "inauguration of ribbons". Many of the students wear this ribbon on their jackets or shirts until graduation. This prom-like evening dance is traditionally held in the ball season of January–February, but November-December has gained popularity in recent years as well. At the beginning of the ball, after a short speech by the headteacher, each student gets the ribbon from their form teacher who pins it on their jacket or dress. Then a series of choreographed dances begins, which the students learned during the months leading up to the event. The first one is traditionally a dance called "palotás" (palace dance) performed by students from different classes, then each graduating class performs their own class dance, and finally there's a waltz, which is also performed by students from different classes. Occasionally, the teachers of the school perform a dance as well. After the ball of the evening organised by the school, students usually go out at night to drink to bars and discos, even if some of them are below drinking age (18 in Hungary).After they graduate, each class has its own party (without choreographed dances) usually at a restaurant, where their teachers are also invited. This is called "érettségi bankett" (graduation banquet).IrelandIn Ireland, this formal dance is called the débutantes' ball. This is referred to as the "grad", or, informally, debs in Ireland. This is a formal dance for students who have just graduated from secondary school (high school) and is traditionally held between September and October. Alcohol is available at these events.ItalyIn Italy the equivalent is known as "i cento giorni" (the one hundred days), an unofficial party organised by students themselves in a location of their choice 100 days before the final exams before high school graduation. Usually the party is not held with all graduating students, rather every class organizes a separated party to celebrate with classmates. The tradition of "i cento giorni" comes from Piedmontese military schools in the late 1800, where days remaining to graduation were counted starting from the 100th with the locution "Mak Π 100", from Piedmontese language "mac pì 100", translating as "just more 100 (days remaining)."LithuaniaIn Lithuania, the prom is held after final exams, usually the same day when high school diplomas are presented. The event is called išleistuvės.NorwayIn Norway, this event varies from school to school. It is usually held during the winter months, and is often called "Nyttårsball" which means "the new years ball." The students are not allowed to bring people from outside the school. In Norway it is the norm to have proms for 8th, 9th, and 10th graders at Norwegian middleschool and most of the time, there is no division between formal and grad – students can attend in whatever clothing they choose, such as traditional knee-long dresses.PolandIn Poland, the prom (studniówka) is a very popular event held each year throughout the country; the word itself means "of or relating to 100 days". Most schools organise such an event about 100 days before the (matura) exams. The first dance of the prom is the polonaise, a traditional Polish dance. Traditionally, the dress code for the studniówka was a typical school outfit, i.e. a white blouse with a dark skirt or trousers. As opposed to the studniówka, the so-called Grand Ball ("bal maturalny") was held after graduation, formal attire required. Nowadays, as Grand Balls are rare, the studniówka has adopted a formal dress code.PortugalIn Portugal there's no prom tradition. Very rarely proms are held. Usually they happen before the end of the school year, in May or June and are called "Baile de Finalistas" (Finalist's Ball). The students wear formal suits and dresses. It is usually organised by a student association, elected in the beginning of the school year by the students to organise school events.RomaniaIn Romania distinct proms are held each year in high schools and college for both the graduating students as well as the newly enrolled ones. They are called graduation balls and freshmen ("boboci", meaning "hatchlings" in Romanian) balls, respectivelly. They are usually not black tie (informal). The venue is chosen by the teaching staff and can be any place, including the school gym or auditorium, a club, restaurant etc. It is common to charge students an admission tax in order to offset the cost. One or more bands or singers are usually hired to provide entertainment. Often the event is sponsored by local businesses. Access is usually controlled and limited to students of that particular high school or university, but exceptions can be made for relatives and it is not uncommon for students from other institutions to try to crash a particular prom. Freshmen proms usually include a popularity contest of some sort, which designates 3 girls and 3 boys as places I, II and III "most popular" as chosen by student vote; the candidates have to undergo various entertaining challenges, which usually include pair dancing. Generally speaking, freshmen proms are the more popular, with college freshmen proms often being publicized as club events and promoted by radio stations, who take the opportunity to introduce bands and singers. Whereas graduation proms are more subdued and often not a public or even a school-wide event, many graduating classes choosing to restrict attendance just to the actual graduates and their teachers.Belarus, Ukraine and RussiaIn Russia, Belarus and Ukraine proms are called "Vypusknоi vechеr" (Выпускной вечер), which literally means "evening of graduation." They take place from the 18th to the 20th or the 23rd to the 25th of June, after all state exams are completed. Proms are never held on the 21st/22nd because they took place on June 21 in 1941, but on the 22nd all graduates were drafted to fight the German invasion during World War II. First, all graduates receive their attestats (or diplomas). Students with higher marks receive them first. Afterward, the prom continues as a school ball, traditionally with classic dances. Students may choose restaurants, cafes, or ships rather than school grounds to hold the events. Proms may be held in a Discothèque, but it must start with the school waltz. At the conclusion of the prom evening, it is tradition to walk the whole night and watch sunrise in the morning (on a hill, if applicable, in Moscow – Sparrow Hills).SlovakiaIn Slovakia, the closest thing to a prom is Stužková, an occasion when the seniors get together with their parents, partners and teachers to celebrate their upcoming graduation. It takes place in November or December. Each of the students receives a green ribbon with their name on it (thus the name Stužková, the Ribbon Ball). The principal and the class teacher are given big green ribbons as well. Many of the students wear this ribbon on their jackets or shirts until graduation. Stužková typically includes a banquet, skits and songs prepared by students, and, of course, dancing. Men wear formal suits and women formal dresses. One week before Stužková is a ceremony of Pečatenie triednej knihy (Sealing of the Class-register) so that teachers will not give bad marks to students before Stužková. It is connected with some story and recorded by cameraman and then put on a DVD of Stužková. It usually starts at 6 p.m. and ends in the early hours of the next morning (4a.m.).SloveniaIn Slovenia, the equivalent is Maturantski ples. It is held before the final exams between January and May, depending on the region and school. Students can bring dates and/or close family to the ball. It is a custom that each student dances the last dance of the first sequence, a Vienna Walzer, with his mother/her father. There is also a dinner and live music.SpainIn some places in Spain proms are also celebrated as parties after school. This parties are called commonly "fiestas de graduación".SwedenIn Sweden, this kind of event is usually known as Studentbalen. The word "Studentbalen" is a proper noun meaning "The Student Ball," while the word studentbal is a common noun that can refer to any formal dinner and dance at a Swedish university. Studentbalen is usually held during the final weeks before graduating and can be formal.SwitzerlandThe Swiss equivalent of a prom is the bal de printemps.[28]Literally translated, this is a "Spring Ball." At some schools in the German speaking cantons, it is called "Maturaball." This is not always organized by the schools, but sometimes by a student's committee. It takes mostly part before the final exams.TurkeyIn Turkey, the equivalent is called "Graduation Ball." The type of event and the rules applied are created by the student governments and school boards. It is a graduation tradition for seniors.OceaniaIn Australia and New Zealand, the tradition is similar to schools in the United States. However, if the event is not described to the final year, it may be described as a Ball, School Formal, or simply Formal. If the event is in the final year of high school, it is sometimes called a Dinner-dance, Leavers' Dinner or Debutante Ball but is also commonly called a School Formal or "Formal." In Australia some schools may also have a Valedictory Dinner, which is like the formal but has students, parents and teachers instead of students and dates.As the name suggests, attire for the occasion is generally formal. Boys will usually dress in a suit and tie. Girls traditionally wear formal gowns or dresses. In most cases a school formal is held at a local reception centre or ballroom. A multicourse meal is generally provided. After the meal students generally dance to popular music played by a hired DJ or sometimes a band. Many students group together to go to the formal in a limousine. While parents do not attend a formal, teachers may act as chaperones for the formal and security guards are sometimes hired. The use of chaperones is intended to prevent the occurrence of violence and alcohol or drug use. Generally after a formal, one or more after-parties are held.In addition to the high school graduation "formal" that marks the end of Year 12, there is also an event that is sometimes held to celebrate completing the School Certificate at the end of Year 10 (or Year 11 in New Zealand), and always held after receiving Higher School Certificate at the end of Year 12 and includes a dinner and dance. The NSW Government announced the abolition of the School Certificate after 2011, with students in year 10 that year being the final cohort to sit the external examinations and receive the qualification. Subsequent Year 10 "Formals" have been deemed "unnecessary" due to the fact that the majority of Year 10 students now progress to Year 11. In previous years when 25–30% of students left high school in Year 10, the Formal was seen as a celebration for those departing, however Year 10 Formals are still sometimes celebrated in the name of tradition. In year 11, students occasionally organise a "semi-formal" or "social" at the end of the school year, which is a more casual version of a formal. If a school has a sister school the social is typically organised in conjunction with them, as a "social event" for people to mingle and meet new people. The Valedictory Dinner (or Val as it is colloquially called) is an event that only occurs in Year 12. In New Zealand, most state school balls are held in the winter months, between June and August, while in Australia, a "formal" is held at the end of the year to mark the end of schooling, as is the Valedictory Dinner. Due to cultural differences, in New Zealand these 'balls' may be held consistently each year with the appropriate respect, but except for private schools they tend to be far less formal and 'proper' than in the US or Australia.In American Samoa the typical Junior/Senior prom is held in most of the schools, an exception would be one of the private schools, which lets even 8th graders, freshmen, and sophomores participate in prom.Central and South America and the CaribbeanIn Venezuela, they have prom as well, they call it "graduación" o "fiesta de graduación." It can consist of dancing, dinner and live music.In Argentina there are "fiestas de egresados" for students finishing their last year of high school. These consist of big parties hosted by the senior students in local discos or other venues, starting at 10 p.m. until about 5 or 6 in the morning. They have dinner with parents and other members of the family, and after midnight friends and other guests join the dance. The parties start in late September, after most students come back from their senior trip to Bariloche and last until early December, after the graduation. The students dress formally.In Brazil, bailes de formatura are usual at the end of high school and at college graduation. There is no crowning of a "king" or a "queen," but evening gowns and suits are required. Family may or may not be included, and there may be a live band or DJ hired to command the music.In Chile, proms, or "fiestas de graduación" (graduation parties), are usually held at convention centers or hotels after the "licenciatura," or graduation from High School. They can also be held after taking the PSU (Chilean University Entrance Exam) in December. Students are expected to dress formally. They are allowed to go with dates or friends. After the dinner,the dance continues through the night into the next day.In Colombia many private schools usually have prom balls as well, usually consisting of a dinner, dancing, live music, and contests. They are usually held at hotels or clubs.In Costa Rica, like many other American countries, the "Baile de graduación" is celebrated after finishing High School, where grade 11 is also the last year. It usually takes place before graduation to celebrate the end of school. It's normally held in hotels or saloons with a dance floor, music and dinner. It starts with the students walking through the dance floor and dancing a waltz. The dinner comes after, and the rest of the night consists of dancing and celebration.In Honduras, they are called "Cena de Graduacion", they are held in luxury hotels, also familiars of the graduating students are invited. This event is held only for private schools, the act consists on a formal graduation and deliver of their diplomas, after that, a dinner is held between the graduating students and their familiars or friends in the same room which later will become in a dance floor for everyone.In Peru, proms—"Fiestas de Promoción"—are usually held at hotels, convention centers, or big residences. The dress code is formal. Some parents and teachers are often invited, but they don't stay the whole night. Dinner is served as well as alcoholic drinks and delicatessen. Breakfast is often served the next day, at around 6–7 am. There is a growing tradition to hold a "Pre-Prom" for the students in the class below the graduating class, and even a "Pre-pre-Prom" for the students in the class below that.In Mexico, most High Schools and Junior High (Middle School) have proms only allow the graduating class (Seniors) to have a prom, after a Church service for the graduating class. The students dress in Formal wear and attend in couples. Some Colleges have an after Graduation dinner dance.In Trinidad and Tobago and most Caribbean countries, it is traditional for schools to hold a dance at the end of the CXC/GCE Advanced Level examination period. This is thrown simultaneously for fifth form and upper sixth form students during the months of June or July after the school's official graduation ceremony. It is colloquially referred to as "grad" or "gradz." Most "gradz" are held in popular clubs, hotels, halls or simply on the school's grounds. Most schools allow students to bring dates, and a formal dress code is usually in effect.In Uruguay, graduation parties are usually held after graduation itself. They may or may be not organised by the school, but by the students itself. Usually a place is rented, and formal parties are held. Students are allowed to take one guest, as a friend or as a partner.Homeschool promsThe concept of extending prom to homeschool students has been realized in recent years. Although some school districts in the United States and Canada allow homeschool students to attend the prom in the school district where they reside, many homeschool groups also organize their own proms. Some states, such as Oregon, Ohio, Georgia, Tennessee, and Michigan, also host statewide homeschool proms, which any homeschool student in that state is welcome to attend.Proms that are specifically geared toward homeschool students can sometimes be significantly different from traditional high school proms. It is not uncommon for a homeschool student to attend a homeschool prom solo, rather than taking a date. Often the music played is chosen by the parents rather than the students.Adult promsAn adult prom is a social event that is almost perfectly similar to a high school prom in terms of themes and attire, except that some adult proms also serve alcoholic beverages, and therefore most adult proms (at least in the U.S.) require those attending to be at least 21 years of age. The origin of adult prom is unclear, though Drew Barrymore is often credited with inadvertenly inventing the concept in the 1990s, when she stated in an interview on Late Night with Conan O'Brien that she threw a prom party for herself and a few friends who never got to go to prom.In the novel Nobody's Property, character Mallorie Walcott, an event planner, mentions that she helped put her younger daughter Cassandra through college, in part, from the revenue she made from planning adult proms in the 1990s either for people who missed their actual high school proms in the 1970s and 1980s, or simply wanted to re-live their prom night.They have become increasingly common, especially in the United States, and usually are hosted either as fundraisers for charities, or for-profit ventures.A slightly different take on the adult prom is that of the disabilities prom, dedicated to providing a prom experience to disabled adults at no charge to the attendees. These events are most often organized by non-profit organizations focusing on the disabled, or large churches.[30]Other prom-themed eventsSometimes, individuals re-create a prom-themed party either for themselves or a friend who didn't get to attend his or her prom.Drew Barrymore has been known to host "prom parties" on at least two occasions, having once stated in an interview with Conan O'Brien in the late 1990s that she threw one for herself one time because she had always wanted a prom, but didn't get the chance, having not finished high school. In 2007, Barrymore threw a prom-themed birthday party for a close friend who had missed her senior prom.In 2009, friends, family members, and hospital workers in Atlanta, Georgia re-created a prom for then-senior Raven Johnson, who was in a coma at the time of her original senior prom.In 2010, Theatrical producers in New York produced an audience participation theatrical play, set in an actual dance hall, called The Awesome 80s Prom, where attendees were at a prom and got to vote on the king and queen from the cast of characters.Anti-proms and alternative promsAnti-proms can be private, unofficial proms that are privately created, outside the control of the school, usually by people who disagree with their school's prom policies. Some schools also include the "Anti Prom" as an official event called MORP (Prom spelled backwards). MORP has become increasingly popular due to the raised awareness and incredible effort on behalf of Kristina Siegert, Esegent Lemma, and Mary Boyd from Belleville, Ontario who refused to participate in the 2017 Prom at Nicholson Catholic College.Adult proms for gay and lesbian adults who could not attend their proms with a date of the same sex are popular in some cities. A 1980 court decision required public schools to allow same-sex dates in the United States.ControversiesOver the course of history, proms have been the source of many controversies, many of which involve LGBT students.In 2002, gay teenager Marc Hall was prohibited from taking his male date to his high school's dance; Hall sued the school board and won.[35]In 2009, Tyler Frost was suspended for attending his girlfriend's prom, because his Christian high school disallowed dancing.[36] Although the principal at Frost's school signed a paper allowing Frost to attend the prom, he said Frost would be suspended if he went, but Frost did so anyway.In a 2010 Itawamba County School District prom controversy, lesbian high school senior Constance McMillen requested to take her girlfriend to the prom at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, where they were both students. The principal denied her request and prohibited her from wearing a tuxedo. When McMillen challenged the school's policy, the prom was canceled, leading McMillen to sue the school.[37] Following a court decision forcing the school to hold the prom, local parents organized a second prom in secret, leaving Constance, her girlfriend and only 5 other students at the official prom.[38]In 2014, student Katie Bialy from Holy Cross Catholic Secondary School (St. Catharines) with the genetic condition Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) was not allowed to go to prom by her school principal Denice Robertson because her grades were not as good as required and she could not graduate.[39] Her condition had impaired her ability to do schoolwork and she asked the principal if she could go as a guest, but the principal refused her the option. This incident has resulted in public support for Bialy in social media and also increased awareness of her condition.In popular cultureIn MoviesThis section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)YearTitle1948A Date with Judy1976Carrie1979Going Steady1980Prom Night1983Valley Girl1984Footloose1985Back to the Future1986Pretty in Pink1987Crazy Love1988Dance 'til Dawn1990Book of Love1993My Boyfriend's Back199910 Things I Hate About YouAmerican PieDrive Me CrazyJawbreakerNever Been KissedShe's All That2002Carrie2004Mean Girls2008Bart Got a RoomProm NightTwilightProm Wars2009Miss MarchCabin Fever 2: Spring Fever2011PromTeen Spirit2013CarrieOn Documentary filmsThis section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)YearTitle2006The World's Best Prom2008American Teen2009Prom Night in MississippiOn TVThis section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)YearEpisodeTV series1990The PromSaved by the Bell1993A Night to RememberBeverly Hills, 90210Promises PromisesRoseanne1995Angels on the AirTouched by an Angel1996The One with the Prom VideoFriends1997The ProphecyBuffy the Vampire Slayer1998Fools Rush Out in Party of FiveParty of FiveProm-ises, Prom-isesBoy Meets World1999The PromBuffy the Vampire SlayerProm NightThat '70s Show2001PromicideDawson's CreekHeart of MineRoswell2006Best Prom EverHow I Met Your MotherThe Party FavorThe O.C.Look Who's StalkingVeronica Mars2007Prom Night at Hater HighOne Tree Hill2008We Built This CityDegrassi: The Next GenerationI've Had the Time of My LifeKyle XY2009Valley GirlsGossip Girl2010The Prom Before the Storm90210Prom WreckerVictorious2011Prom QueenGlee2015Last DancePretty Little Liars2017MTV TV SeriesPromposalMusicThis section may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Please help by editing the article to make improvements to the overall structure. (April 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)YearSongArtist1958A Date With JerryWanda Jackson1990Promnight in PigtownJohn Gorka2000Teenage DirtbagWheatus2008A Night to RememberHigh School Musical 3: Senior Year2009Plain JaneB.J. ThomasSee alsoFurther readingReferencesCategories

The first quotation from Donald Trump ever to appear in The New York Times came on October 16, 1973. Trump was responding to charges filed by the Justice Department alleging racial bias at his family’s real-estate company. “They are absolutely ridiculous,” Trump said of the charges. “We have never discriminated, and we never would.”In the years since then, Trump has assembled a long record of comment on issues involving African Americans as well as Mexicans, Hispanics more broadly, Native Americans, Muslims, Jews, immigrants, women, and people with disabilities. His statements have been reflected in his behavior—from public acts (placing ads calling for the execution of five young black and Latino men accused of rape, who were later shown to be innocent) to private preferences (“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” a former employee of Trump’s Castle, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, told a writer for The New Yorker). Trump emerged as a political force owing to his full-throated embrace of “birtherism,” the false charge that the nation’s first black president, Barack Obama, was not born in the United States. His presidential campaign was fueled by nativist sentiment directed at nonwhite immigrants, and he proposed barring Muslims from entering the country. In 2016, Trump described himself to The Washington Post as “the least racist person that you’ve ever encountered.”Instances of bigotry involving Donald Trump span more than four decades. The Atlantic interviewed a range of people with knowledge of several of those episodes. Their recollections have been edited for concision and clarity.I. “You Don’t Want to Live With Them Either”The Justice Department’s 1973 lawsuit against Trump Management Company focused on 39 properties in New York City. The government alleged that employees were directed to tell African American lease applicants that there were no open apartments. Company policy, according to an employee quoted in court documents, was to rent only to “Jews and executives.”The Justice Department frequently used consent decrees to settle discrimination cases, offering redress to plaintiffs while allowing defendants to avoid an admission of guilt. The rationale: Consent decrees achieved speedier results with less public rancor.Nathaniel Jones was the general counsel for the NAACP. He later became a federal judge. John Yinger, an economist specializing in residential discrimination, served at the time as an expert witness in a number of fair-housing cases. Elyse Goldweber, a Justice Department lawyer, brought the first federal suit against Trump Management.NATHANIEL JONES: The 1968 Fair Housing Act gave us leverage to go after major developers and landlords. The situation in New York was terrible.JOHN YINGER: Community groups like the Urban League started doing audits and tests to show discrimination. In 1973, the Urban League found a lot of discrimination in some of the properties that Trump Management owned.ELYSE GOLDWEBER: I went to a place called Operation Open City. What they had done was send “testers”—meaning one white couple and one couple of color—to Trump Village, a very large, lower-middle-class housing project in Brooklyn. And of course the white people were treated great, and for the people of color there were no apartments. We subpoenaed all their documents. That’s how we found that a person’s application, if you were a person of color, had a big C on it.The Department of Justice brings the case and we name Fred Trump, the father, and Donald Trump, the son, and Donald hires Roy Cohn, of Army-McCarthy fame. [Cohn, a Trump mentor, had served as Senator Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel during his investigations of alleged Communists in the government and was accused of pressuring the Army to give preferential treatment to a personal friend.] Cohn turns around and sues us for $100 million. This was my first appearance as a lawyer in court. Cohn spoke for two hours, then the judge ruled from the bench that you can’t sue the government for prosecuting you. The next week we took the depositions. My boss took Fred’s, and I got to take Donald’s. He was exactly the way he is today. He said to me at one point during a coffee break, “You know, you don’t want to live with them either.”Everyone in the world has looked for that deposition. We cannot find it. Trump always acted like he was irritated to be there. He denied everything, and we went on with our case. We had the records with the C, and we had the testers, and you could see that everything was lily-white over there. Ultimately they settled—they signed a consent decree. They had to post all their apartments with the Urban League, advertise in the Amsterdam News, many other things. It was pretty strong.JOHN YINGER: Trump had some interesting language after the settlement: He said that it did not require him to accept people on welfare, which was kind of beside the point.Under the terms of the settlement, reached in 1975, the Trumps did not admit to any wrongdoing. But soon, according to the government, they were back at it. In 1978, the Justice Department alleged that Trump Management was in breach of the agreement. The new case dragged on until 1982, when the original consent decree expired and the case was closed. Soon, Trump’s headquarters would be installed in Trump Tower, which opened in February 1983. Barbara Res was the construction manager.BARBARA RES: We met with the architect to go over the elevator-cab interiors at Trump Tower, and there were little dots next to the numbers. Trump asked what the dots were, and the architect said, “It’s braille.” Trump was upset by that. He said, “Get rid of it.” The architect said, “I’m sorry; it’s the law.” This was before the Americans With Disabilities Act, but New York City had a law. Trump’s exact words were: “No blind people are going to live in this building.”ELYSE GOLDWEBER: Was he concerned about injustice? No. Never. This was an annoyance. We were little annoying people, and we wouldn’t go away.BARBARA RES: As far as discrimination, he wouldn’t discriminate against somebody who had $3 million to pay for a three-bedroom apartment. Eventually he had some very unsavory characters there. But if you read John O’Donnell’s book [Trumped! The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump—His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, written with James Rutherford and published in 1991], Trump talked about how he didn’t want black people handling his money; he wanted the guys with the yarmulkes. He was very much the kind of person who would take people of a religion, like Jews; or a race, like blacks; or a nationality, like Italians, and ascribe to them certain qualities. Blacks were lazy, and Jews were good with money, and Italians were good with their hands—and Germans were clean.NATHANIEL JONES: Consent decrees were an important tool. The sad thing now is that, in his last act as Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum curtailing enforcement programs and consent decrees across the board when it comes to discrimination.II. “Bring Back the Death Penalty”The so-called Central Park Five were a group of black and Latino teens who were accused—wrongly—of raping a white woman in Central Park on April 19, 1989. Donald Trump took out full-page ads in all four major New York newspapers to argue that perpetrators of crimes such as this one “should be forced to suffer” and “be executed.” In two trials, in August and December 1990, the youths were convicted of violent offenses including assault, robbery, rape, sodomy, and attempted murder; their sentences ranged from five to 15 years in prison. In 2002, after the discovery of exonerating DNA evidence and the confession by another individual to the crime, the convictions of the Central Park Five were vacated. The men were awarded a settlement of $41 million for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and a racially motivated conspiracy to deprive them of their rights. Trump took to the pages of the New York Daily News, calling the settlement “a disgrace.” During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump would again insist on the guilt of the Central Park Five.Jonathan C. Moore represented four of the Central Park Five when they later sued the City of New York. Yusef Salaam was one of the five young men who were wrongly convicted. Timothy L. O’Brien spent hundreds of hours with Trump while researching his 2005 book, TrumpNation. C. Vernon Mason represented Salaam and other defendants.JONATHAN C. MOORE: The Trump ad was calling for the death penalty for juveniles. It was taken out at a time before there was any adjudication of their guilt. The theme was: Here are all these young black kids and Hispanic kids who are going to rape our young white women, so let’s put them all away. You know, we call them the Central Park Five, but it’s really the Central Park 15, or 18, or however many family members there were, because the family members suffered a great deal as well. They visited the boys in prison, on holidays; they did their birthdays inside, had Christmas parties. To this day I talk to some of them and they go into tears when they think about what happened.YUSEF SALAAM: When we were accused of raping the Central Park jogger, it really wasn’t an accusation. It wasn’t like we were innocent and had to be proved guilty in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of the people. Everybody, including Donald Trump, rushed to judge us, and therefore it became that much more difficult to be able to mount a really successful fight. And, of course, we lost.TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN: One of the things Trump learned when he injected himself into the Central Park Five case was that he could get attention for himself because he was a spokesman for a certain type of Archie Bunker New Yorker. I think that’s one of the bonds that he shares with [Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor] Rudy Giuliani: They’re both profoundly guys from that moment in New York when a lot of racial boundaries got drawn.C. VERNON MASON: The level of animosity and hatred was palpable. It was brutal. The language used around this case—“savages”—bordered on the kinds of stuff that Ida B. Wells and others wrote about during the lynching period.YUSEF SALAAM: For him to say, You know what? I’m going to take out an ad, and I’m going to call for the state to kill these individuals—it was almost as if he was trying to get the public or somebody from the darkest places in society to come into our homes. Remember, they had published our phone numbers, our names, and our addresses in New York City’s newspapers. So we were pariahs.C. VERNON MASON: The defendants were afraid for their own safety and for their families. These were not people who had substantial means to protect themselves with security guards, or who were living in some gated community.YUSEF SALAAM: I think about when they took our DNA and they tried to match it against what they had. And there was no match, and they still moved forward. The spiked wheels of justice continued to roll down the hill and mow us down. And all of this on the heels of what Donald Trump had published. Donald Trump’s ad was vicious. It was very disrespectful of what the law is supposed to be about.JONATHAN C. MOORE: I have children, and I can’t imagine my son being in prison from age 14 to age 21. You’re stealing the most innocent part of somebody’s life. None of these kids had ever had any real interactions with the law before. When they were finally vindicated, there was never any apology from Trump, or even a hint of an apology.YUSEF SALAAM: Donald Trump’s ad ran on May 1, 1989. The crime had happened April 19, 1989. We hadn’t even started trial! That was just a few weeks after we were accused. He put nails in our coffin. He’s continuing to do that by continuing to say that we are guilty, by continuing to say that the police department had so much evidence against us. What evidence did they have that stuck? They had no evidence. They had manufactured false confessions.C. VERNON MASON: In 2016—this is 26 years after the case, and 14 years after it had been proved that none of these defendants had anything to do with that rape—Donald Trump said, I still believe they’re guilty. And I guess, in his mind, he would suggest that they still should be executed.TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN: He trusts his gut on issues surrounding race, because he’s got a simplistic, deterministic, and racist perspective on who people are. I think at his core he has a genetic understanding of what makes people good and bad or successful. And you see it all the time—he talks about people having good genes. He looks at the world that way. He’s got a very Aryan view of people and race.III. “They Don’t Look Like Indians to Me”In the early 1990s, Trump attempted to block the building of new casinos in Connecticut and New York that could cut into his casino operations in Atlantic City. (All of Trump’s casinos eventually went into bankruptcy.) In October 1993, Trump appeared before the House Subcommittee on Native American Affairs of the Committee on Natural Resources. The subcommittee was chaired by Bill Richardson, later New Mexico’s governor. Trump was there to support an effort to modify legislation that had given Native American tribes the right to own and operate casinos. George Miller, a Democrat from California and the chair of the Committee on Natural Resources, was also present.Tadd Johnson, of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Bois Forte Band, served as the Democratic counsel on the subcommittee. Rick Hill is a former chair of the National Indian Gaming Association and of the Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin. Pat Williams was a member of Congress from Montana.Trump began by noting that he had prepared a “politically correct” statement for the committee, but almost immediately went off script. The hearing became loud and acrimonious.BILL RICHARDSON: He said he didn’t think that Native Americans deserved the legislation, because there was a lot of corruption around Native American casinos. I remember asking him after the hearing, “Well, what’s the evidence?” He said, “The FBI has it.” I said, “You’re making the accusation; why don’t you bring the evidence?” He said, “No, you should ask the FBI.” I said, “You’re making the charge of corruption and you’re not backing it up—that is unacceptable.”TADD JOHNSON: Trump was wearing pancake makeup, which I hadn’t seen before, at least not on somebody testifying in Congress. He was very evasive, and he made all these allegations about organized-crime activity but could produce no single incident, no tangible evidence, nobody we could talk to. A lot of what he was saying were just fabrications.RICK HILL: He said, “You guys are all going to have egg on your faces.” This was going to be the worst thing to happen since Al Capone. Trump went all threatening, raving about how there is no way we could stop the Mafia. He used the phrase Joey Killer. He said there was no way the tribal chairmen could stop Joey Killer.BILL RICHARDSON: The second allegation he made that was very disturbing at that hearing was to examine some Native American tribes’ application as Indian tribes—they were trying to get the subcommittee to basically declare their tribes or their group of individuals Native Americans. Trump mentioned Native Americans who had recently opened casinos and said to George Miller, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” He said that. It was so outrageous.RICK HILL: Miller challenged him. He said, “You know how racist what you’re saying is? How racist that is to judge people by what we think they look like and ignore their inherent rights as a person?”TADD JOHNSON: George responded, “Well, thank God people don’t have rights based upon your look test. And, you know, how many times have we heard this before in this country?” And then he went through a litany of various groups that were discriminated against, which is a long list.PAT WILLIAMS: I was stunned by the openness of Trump’s anger toward anyone who would compete with him—and particularly if they were people of color.TADD JOHNSON: I remember watching the faces of the Indian people in the back. There were some tribal elders who had come in from Minnesota, and were giving looks that could kill.BILL RICHARDSON: It was the most hostile hearing that I’ve ever been involved in. And I was in Congress for 15 years.PAT WILLIAMS: I think the reason Trump blew up at Miller didn’t so much have to do with whatever the debate was about at the moment. He blew up because he came to realize that Miller was more important than he was.Later, using a front organization called the New York Institute for Law and Society, Trump and his associate Roger Stone placed advertisements in upstate–New York newspapers in an attempt to block the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe’s planned Sullivan County casino. On a page proof of one ad, featuring hypodermic needles and lines of cocaine, Trump wrote: “Roger, this could be good!” Trump, Stone, and the institute would later pay $250,000 in fines for violating disclosure rules governing political advertising. Bradley Waterman served as general counsel and tax counsel for the Saint Regis Mohawks. Tony Cellini was the town supervisor of Thompson, where the casino was going to be built.BRADLEY WATERMAN: Trump and Stone created an organization that was said to be pro-family and anti-gaming. Its real mission was to put the kibosh on gaming by the Mohawks in the Catskills and in that way protect Trump’s casinos in Atlantic City. To that end, the organization—actually Trump and Stone—purchased ads that portrayed the Mohawks as criminals, drug dealers, etc. The Mohawks regarded the ads as racist. So did I. So did everyone else who weighed in.TONY CELLINI: We were hurting for jobs in this area. And then all of a sudden these attack ads came out, which were financed, we found out later, to the tune of more than $1 million by Donald Trump.BRADLEY WATERMAN: Trump personally approved the ads. For example, he wrote comments on proofs such as “Roger—do it.” Not surprisingly, Trump and Stone lied about the number of people who contributed financially to the organization. It was strictly a Trump-Stone operation. The chiefs were furious, particularly since Trump never met any Mohawks, set foot on Mohawk territory, or otherwise tried to learn about the Mohawks.IV. “Our Very Vicious World”In the summer of 2005, Donald Trump had an idea: What if the next season of his reality-TV show, The Apprentice, pitted “a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites”? Trump thought the format would be a sort of social commentary—“reflective of our very vicious world.” The concept never made it to air, but Trump’s treatment of black contestants on his show generated controversy.One contestant, Kevin Allen, a graduate of Emory University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Chicago, was criticized by Trump on the show for being too educated; at the same time, Trump suggested that Allen was personally intimidating.Mark Harris was a television critic for Entertainment Weekly. Kwame Jackson was the runner-up on The Apprentice’s first season.MARK HARRIS: We were still very early in the history of reality-competition TV. The Apprentice started in January 2004, so the models that I was working off of as a critic were really just Survivor and American Idol. The Apprentice had this very manipulative approach to race. I felt that it was casting and shaping stories toward stereotypes that a default white audience would find somehow satisfying.KEVIN ALLEN: I remember Donald Trump asking me, “Kevin, why are the women in the suite scared of you?” I had never heard this before from anybody. It was shocking to me to hear that sort of attack. There was a lot of picking at me and trying to make me come out and be that overly aggressive, overbearing, scary African American male. But I was in law school at the time and I had worked on Capitol Hill, and I’m fairly adept at defusing that sort of thing. I think it made me sort of a boring character. But there were moments when I was put in situations where it could have gone wrong.MARK HARRIS: It’s interesting to look back at it now, because the way Kevin Allen was treated was like a sneak preview of white critical reaction to Obama. It was like, Well, maybe he’s too qualified, maybe he’s too smart, maybe he’s too cerebral.KWAME JACKSON: I think that Donald Trump had only been used to dealing with black men of a very specific genre: Mike Tyson, Don King, Herschel Walker—celebrities, entertainers. So to have a young African American man with arguably a better education than him—I don’t think that was something he was used to, because obviously he didn’t hire any in his organization.Randal Pinkett, a black man and the show’s 2005 winner, was asked by Trump to share his title with the white runner-up, Rebecca Jarvis. Pinkett refused. As the winner, he later worked briefly for the Trump Organization.RANDAL PINKETT: He did not want to see an African American as the outright and sole winner. I believe I backed him into a corner. It goes back to an old adage that I’ve been told throughout my life as an African American man—that you have to be twice as good just to be considered equal. And that is a statement that reflects the thinking of a Donald Trump. Donald can be racist in ways that he’s not even aware are racist, because he is so out of touch with people who are not like him.TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN: The only people of color he’s gone out of his way to try to establish relationships with are people who are athletes, celebrities, or entertainers. He became close to Mike Tyson because Donald and Don King were trying to arrange heavyweight fights in Atlantic City, to draw high rollers to the casinos. It wasn’t because he was fond of black athletes. It was because black boxers were good for his business.RANDAL PINKETT: I was the only person of color that I saw at an executive level in my entire year with the Trump Organization. And to put that into context, this was 2006. This was the height of Donald’s popularity with The Apprentice. He had launched several ventures, most of which are now defunct: Trump University, Trump Institute, Trump Ice, Trump Mortgage, Trump magazine. All of those companies were up and running. All of them had employees; they had CEOs who ran those companies—and still, as I recall, none of them had persons of color in executive roles. None of them.V. “He Doesn’t Have a Birth Certificate”“Our current president came out of nowhere, came out of nowhere … The people who went to school with him—they never saw him; they don’t know who he is.” That statement, made at the February 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference, marked the launch of Donald Trump’s public efforts to sow doubt about whether President Barack Obama had been born in the United States. “Birtherism” had been festering for several years before Trump embraced it—supplanting other proponents and becoming its most prominent advocate. In March, on The View, Trump called on Obama to show his birth certificate. In April, he said that he had dispatched a team of investigators to Hawaii to search for Obama’s birth records.For Trump, the run-up to birtherism had been a controversy that flared when a Manhattan developer proposed building an Islamic cultural center on a site in Lower Manhattan—the so-called Ground Zero mosque. In 2010, on the Late Show, Trump told David Letterman: “I think it’s very insensitive to build it there. I think it’s not appropriate.” Letterman pushed back, saying that blocking an Islamic facility would be akin to declaring “war with Muslims.” Trump answered: “Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.” Trump offered to buy out one of the investors in order to halt the project. The action made him one of the project’s key opponents and for the first time gave him national visibility on the political right.Anti-Muslim sentiment animated Trump’s birtherism campaign. He said of Obama on The Laura Ingraham Show in March 2011: “He doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me—and I have no idea whether this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be—that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ ”Sam Nunberg became an adviser to Trump after working with him to oppose the Islamic cultural center. Jerome Corsi, the author of Where’s the Birth Certificate?, and Orly Taitz, a dentist and an attorney, are among the instigators of the birther movement. Dan Pfeiffer was the White House communications director.SAM NUNBERG: I don’t believe Donald Trump would have done birtherism if he had not done the Ground Zero mosque and gotten all the conservative publicity he did. I had met Roger Stone, and we briefed Trump on the issue, and he came out and said he wanted to buy the site. Then he got interviews on Fox News. It also was a part of his brand—he wasn’t just somebody coming out saying, “I’m opposed to you,” but “I want to buy it.” He went where the “Just run on lowering taxes” Republican intelligentsia, the Republican establishment, will tell you not to go.JEROME CORSI: Donald Trump came into it pretty late. I was driving the story well before Donald Trump. He called me maybe three or four times in the period around April and May 2011. Donald Trump’s interest advanced the story in terms of public awareness.ORLY TAITZ: I just turned over all the information to him. I talked to his assistant. She told me to forward all the information to his attorney Michael Cohen. Because Trump was a well-known public figure, the issue did get attention.DAN PFEIFFER: It wasn’t until Trump picked this up that it spilled into the mainstream. It created a permission structure for normal reporters to ask this question. It’s like, Well, Donald Trump, this famous person, said this on The View, which is different than saying Jerome Corsi wrote it in a book.SAM NUNBERG: It was about destroying Obama’s favorability, his likability. It was this way to differentiate Trump from Mitt Romney, who was dancing around not wanting to criticize Obama directly. We looked at Obama as a Manchurian president. Trump will do anything to win. Birtherism would brand Trump as the guy who would do anything he could to take down Obama. He wasn’t just going to lose with a smile and lose respectably the way John McCain and Mitt Romney liked doing.Attempting to quell the conspiracy theories, on April 27, 2011, Obama released his long-form birth certificate. Ben Rhodes was Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.BEN RHODES: I remember Obama started to get increasingly frustrated in Oval Office sessions—not just that Trump would say these things, but also that the media would cover it as a story. Obama was angry that he had to release the birth certificate. I remember being in the Oval Office and him commenting that he couldn’t believe he had to do this, but feeling he had to nip it in the bud. Obama was more acutely aware of issues involving race and racism than he sometimes projected. Obama knew this wasn’t going away, and he knew it was racist, and he knew he needed as much armor as he could get.A few days later, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Obama and the comedian Seth Meyers mocked Trump’s birther claims, leaving Trump red-faced and seething at a table in the audience. Jay Carney was the White House press secretary.SETH MEYERS: We were constantly getting a refreshed list of who was going to be in the room. I will say that we were happy when we saw that Trump was going to be there. I think our best joke about him being a racist that night was: “Donald Trump said recently he has a great relationship with the blacks, but unless the Blacks are a family of white people, I bet he is mistaken.” There’s a thing Donald Trump does better than anybody else, which is that by stating one position, he reveals that he actually holds the opposite position.One of the reasons we piled on with our Trump jokes wasn’t that he was a reality star. It was that he was someone who was doing the rounds, continuing to double down and triple down and quadruple down on this incredibly racist rhetoric. Historically, if you look at other rooms I’ve been in, I’ve never done a run of 10 jokes about anyone before. Obviously we felt pretty strongly for that to be the case.Read: Seth Meyers has ‘very fond’ memories of roasting TrumpJAY CARNEY: After that, birtherism diminished as a subject in most media, but I’m sure folks took notice of what Trump had done, and how, by completely concocting this nonsense, he had hijacked the conversation. It still pisses me off.DAN PFEIFFER: The mainstream political conversation after Obama released his birth certificate was: Trump is a clown, right? He’s a clown who got out of his depth and has embarrassed himself and should be run out of politics forever. It was not long after that that every Republican—even, you know, putatively serious Republicans like Mitt Romney—went and begged Trump for his endorsement. I don’t think any of us realized that there was a tremendous appetite for anger in the Republican base that Trump was seeking to use.Trump did not let up. In May 2012, he told the CNN host Wolf Blitzer that “a lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate.” In August, he called the birth certificate “a fraud.” Finally, in September 2016, under political pressure during his presidential campaign, Trump acknowledged that Obama had in fact been born in the United States. That was not the end of the matter. In November 2017, The New York Times reported that Trump was still privately asserting that Obama’s birth certificate may have been fraudulent.BEN RHODES: It cannot be overstated that this is the creation story of Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. His whole brand is: I will say the things that the other guys won’t. Without birtherism there is no Trump presidency.VI. “On Many Sides”Roughly six months into Trump’s presidency, on the night of Friday, August 11, 2017, hundreds of neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched onto the University of Virginia’s campus in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and soil,” a Nazi slogan. The “Unite the Right” rally was protesting the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Confrontations arose between members of the so-called alt-right and groups of counterprotesters, including members of the anti-fascist movement known as “antifa.”Mike Signer, Charlottesville’s mayor, had been dealing with far-right protests all summer. Richard Spencer was one of the key figures behind the “Unite the Right” rally.MIKE SIGNER: The first event was in May of 2017, led by Richard Spencer, who invented the term alt-right and is a UVA graduate. He had done an event right after Trump’s inauguration where he had led a fascist salute with all these people at a hotel in Washington, D.C.—buzz cuts, uniforms, very frightening.RICHARD SPENCER: There is no question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump. It really was because of his campaign and this new potential for a nationalist candidate who was resonating with the public in a very intense way. The alt-right found something in Trump. He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible.David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan leader, who participated in the Charlottesville rally, called it a “turning point” for his own movement, which seeks to “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.” Will Peyton, the rector of St. Paul’s Memorial Church, near the UVA campus, hosted an interfaith service in opposition to the rally. As alt-right protesters marched by, the roughly 700 people in the church were advised to stay inside for their own safety.WILL PEYTON: I was out in a parking lot during the morning while all the various neo-Nazi people and different white-supremacist groups were gathering and unloading. They were piling out of vans and trucks, and kind of giddy. I’d never seen swastikas and Nazi salutes out in the open like that—people wearing helmets and carrying clubs and shields.RICHARD SPENCER: The whole day was chaotic. I woke up that morning; we had breakfast. We didn’t quite know what was going to happen. I certainly thought it was going to be a big event, but I never quite knew that it was going to turn into this ultimately historic event.MIKE SIGNER: Richard Spencer and David Duke spent time attacking me and talking about the Jewish mayor of the city. There was a threat against a synagogue saying, “It’s time to torch those jewish monsters lets go 3pm.” There was an intensity in the anti-Semitism that previously was unthinkable in American political life. I grew up five blocks from the headquarters of the American Nazi Party, in Arlington, Virginia. It was above what is now a coffee shop, in a ramshackle house, and we laughed at this lonely, pathetic old man who would come in and out of that building. Now you’re seeing something different. I was infuriated that you weren’t seeing a condemnation of this coming from the White House.On August 12, a black man named DeAndre Harris was beaten by at least four white supremacists. At about 1:45 p.m. that day, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old white supremacist from Ohio, drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others. Fields was convicted in December 2018 of first-degree murder. In March, he pleaded guilty to 29 of 30 federal hate-crime charges in a separate trial. Speaking on the afternoon of the attack from his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, Trump denounced “this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” He paused, then repeated: “On many sides.” Lisa Woolfork is a UVA professor and an organizer with Black Lives Matter’s Charlottesville chapter. Jason Kessler was an organizer of the rally.RICHARD SPENCER: We were dealing with this terrible accident that occurred with James Fields and Heather Heyer, and it was certainly not why I came and I don’t think it’s why anyone else came. I was trying to deal with that situation in the best way I could by just saying that we simply don’t know what happened and we should stress that this young man deserves a fair investigation and a fair trial. Trump, in his own way, was being honest and calling it like he saw it. I was proud of him at that moment.MIKE SIGNER: This was a coordinated invasion of the city by violent right-wing militias. I watched a clip of the president and my mouth fell open, and I was at once ashamed for him and for the country.LISA WOOLFORK: The car sped down Fourth Street and collided with the counterdemonstrators who were marching that way. I was about 100 feet from the impact, and it was complete chaos. I remember seeing a shoe fly into the air. I remember people screaming. It was an utterly terrible moment. After a long and traumatic day, the president’s remarks were chilling. One of the dangers of having the president speak in the way that he spoke about the events in Charlottesville—about “many sides”—was that it promotes this very dangerous false equivalency. Trump made things much worse by explicitly stating that you can be a white supremacist or a Nazi or a neo-Confederate and still be a good person.JASON KESSLER: The president was absolutely correct in blaming both sides. I’ve probably seen more video of the event than anyone alive. People who are upset feel that the majority of the blame should be with the alt-right because of the tragic death of Heather Heyer. It’s fair enough to acknowledge their emotional need for this, but no one at “Unite the Right” was responsible for that car accident but James Fields himself.WILL PEYTON: I had a visceral, emotional reaction when I heard what the president said. I was an eyewitness. I saw with my own eyes that there was one side here that came planning and intending violence. There’s just no two ways about that.On August 14, Trump walked back his initial statement and specifically condemned “the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.” A day later, he walked back his walk-back. There were “very fine people on both sides,” he said, adding that the “alt-left” had been “very, very violent.” White-nationalist leaders welcomed his remarks.MIKE SIGNER: There was a robocall that went out in November 2018, because the trial of Alex Fields was happening and he was about to be convicted. The call was all about how the Jew mayor and the Negro police chief had created this situation, and how we’re the ones who should be held responsible for Heather Heyer’s death.VII. “Go Back to Their Huts”In office, Donald Trump followed through on his promise to curb immigration from majority-Muslim countries. He created a commission to investigate voter fraud (virtually nonexistent, according to state election officials), claiming that he would have won the popular vote but for millions of ballots cast by people in the U.S. illegally. He shut down the government for 35 days in an attempt to secure funding for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He reportedly referred to African countries as “shithole” nations—asking why the U.S. can’t have more immigrants from Norway instead—and complained that, after seeing America, immigrants from Nigeria would never “go back to their huts.” The administration favored victims of Hurricane Harvey, which hit Houston, over those of Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico, sending three times as many workers to Houston and approving 23 times as much money for individual assistance within the first nine days after each hurricane.SAM NUNBERG: Remember in 2011 he was criticized when he said, “I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks”? I think he just doesn’t speak “politically correct.” It’s not in his vernacular, or consciousness. It’s generational. It’s also probably—not to play psychiatrist—it’s growing up where he grew up, in Queens, New York, and dealing with union members, dealing in a crime-riddled New York City. I think it’s just the way things were thought of as different then.TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN: This is the same debate we have about whether or not he’s a liar. And I get the journalistic need to be really clear about how we use terms. You know, lying implies volition and knowledge. But I’m very comfortable saying I think he’s got a pathology around lying. And when it comes to race, I don’t think it’s merely using racial animosities or race-baiting as tools to promote his business. I think it’s a deep-seated reflection of what he thinks about how the world works.KWAME JACKSON: America’s always trying to find this gotcha moment that shows Donald Trump is racist—you know, let’s find this one big thing. Let’s look for that one time when he burned a cross in someone’s yard so we can now finally say it. People refuse to see the bread crumbs that are already in front of you, leading you to grandma’s house.This article appears in the June 2019 print edition with the headline “An Oral History of Trump’s Bigotry.”An Oral History of Trump’s Bigotry