History Book: Let them dance

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, April 14th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

The year, 1980, in a town with a ban on dancing. And a group of determined teens ready to shake it up.

Here’s WORLD’s Emma Eicher.

EMMA EICHER: There’s a new kid in town. The town is tiny Elmore City, Oklahoma. And the new kid? Leonard Coffee. He just moved from a much bigger city.

For a kid named Coffee in a sleepy town, he’s like a shot of espresso. Flashy clothes. Unafraid to buck the norms. An outsized personality in the junior high class.

And one day, he asks a question that changes everything.

LISA ROLLINGS: “Why don't y'all dance here?”

Lisa Rollings was a sophomore at the time.

ROLLINGS: You know, he just thought that was weird that we didn't have a prom.

As Rollings told me the story, she remembered that there really was nothing weird about it. Because back in 1980, nobody’s allowed to dance publicly in Elmore City.

If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because it’s the plot of the 1984 hit movie Footloose, starring Kevin Bacon.

BACON: And there was a time for this law but not anymore. See, this is our time to dance.

The movie takes plenty of artistic liberties. But the basic story really did happen. The president of the school board at the time was Raymond Temple. He gave an interview to a promotional website for the community called Chickasaw Country.

RAYMOND TEMPLE: And they asked me, ‘Why can’t we have a prom? Like other schools do?’ and I just … ‘I don’t see why not.’

Now, juniors and seniors from Elmore City High are begging him to let them have a prom. His daughter, Mary Ann, is junior class president. And she’s leading the charge.

She and Lisa Rollings are friends.

LISA: It was the whole entire class getting behind the whole idea of asking for a prom.

Rollings sent me an old school photo of her 15-year-old self. She has a bob haircut, bangs, thick glasses. And even though it seemed normal to her not to have a prom, she didn’t know why. Nobody knows why. So her friend Mary Ann gets to the bottom of it.

LISA: That's when she told me that, you know, that it was against the law to dance.

Lisa can’t believe it. So she asks her dad. He’s the mayor, so he would know.

LISA: I said, Dad, I said, is it against the law to dance? And he said, let me check on it for you, you know. So he checked the ordinance book at City Hall, and sure enough, it was on the books that it was against the law to dance publicly.

The city ordinance banning public dancing goes back to the 19th century. The city fathers believed dancing could lead to sin.

And in 1980, almost all of Elmore City’s church leaders think so too.

LISA: Me and Mary Ann both went to the Methodist Church, and our pastor was the only pastor in our town who was supportive of the kids at the time.

But Freddie Johnson, pastor of the nearby Pentecostal church—not so much. Here he is in an interview with KOCO5 News, Oklahoma City.

KOCO 5 NEWS: The beat of music, the curves of the body, the display of the outward person, we don’t believe is congruent with the principles of Bible doctrine, especially.

But the kids are determined. And a lot of parents and faculty are too. The school board president sees the prom as a better alternative to how the kids usually sinned every year.

LISA: They would either go to Lindsay … or go out and drink and party in a pasture somewhere.

Hundreds of townspeople show up at a school board meeting to hear the fate of the prom. Four of the five members are split right down the middle, until Temple casts the tie-breaking vote.

MARY ANN & RAYMOND: It was tear jerking, when it got to dad … and dad said, ‘Let ‘em dance!’

RAYMOND: Let ‘em dance!’

MARY ANN: It was one of those moments that was iconic.

The day of the dance, April 18th, 1980, Rollings and her classmates start decorating the school.

But they’re mindful that some kids might have a moral objection. So they offer the option to play ping pong in a nearby game room.

The night begins at 7 o’clock sharp. News crews line the sidewalks and jostle each other inside. They shoulder big cameras and tape electrical cords to the floor. They’ve been following the town’s unusual events and broadcasting them to the rest of the country. Here’s how KOCO5 covered it.

KOCO-5: Boys in rented tuxes. All the familiar earmarks of a high school prom, a traditional piece of Americana just about everywhere … except here.

The kids sit down for dinner first. Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, bread rolls and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Everyone wolfs it down, eager for the night to start.

LISA: Think everybody was just wanting to get through that first part of the night, just so we could get to the prom part.

The students cram into the bathrooms to put on their dancing shoes. Literally.

LISA: We changed into hard jeans and boots or whatever it was we were going to dance in.

By 9pm, everyone is awkwardly crowded around the edge of the dance floor.

The DJ who drove down from Oklahoma City, plays a famous rock anthem by Led Zeppelin.

LISA: I don't know how anybody dances to that song, but that's what we started off with.

At first, no one is brave enough to step out.

LISA: I think we were feeling very self conscious, because not a lot of us knew how to dance …

But then the DJ switches to Michael Jackson. That’s when everyone seems to gather some courage.

LISA: We were, we were like, okay, we can do this, you know, you'd go, just grab somebody off the wall and dance.

Couples take each other’s hands, and groups of people gather in circles.

LISA: We didn't know any rules when it came to dancing. And so I'm sure we broke a lot of them, but we just, we just had fun.

At one point, Rollings takes a peek inside the game room.

LISA: There was nobody out in the game room. They were all in the prom area.

The dancing finally ends around midnight. It was the first prom most of the students had, and it wouldn’t be the last.

The old city ordinance disappears after 1984. Rollings thinks Elmore City residents have softened a bit. Nowadays, nobody seems to have a problem with dancing.

She says the town started an annual Footloose Festival 15 years ago. Next Saturday will celebrate the 45th anniversary of the prom.

LISA: I just turned 60 this last year, and it's probably the most exciting thing, you know, fun thing that's ever happened, you know, in my life. I have very, very fond memories of it. And just the whole night was just, it was like a dream.

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Emma Eicher.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.