MAKING NO FRIENDS IN MISSISSIPPI

By STEVE LOPEZ

Scott and Beverly Williams lived all over the world during Scott's 20 years in the Air Force, but no matter where they were, one rule applied. "We raised our children to be color-blind," says Scott. But when the fighter pilot retired in 1991 and settled in the sleepy town of Hernando, Miss. (pop. 3,500), half an hour south of Memphis, Tenn., the family rule ran up against local tradition.

Hernando High School has two principals: one white, one black. It has co-class presidents: one white, one black. The offices of vice president and secretary-treasurer alternate each year between blacks and whites. And when students vote on yearbook honors--cutest, most likely to succeed--winners are again divided by race. So much for color blindness.

Scott and Beverly, who grew up in Louisiana, feared they had landed not just deep in the South but deep in the past as well. Their children were mystified. "I just sucked it up at first," says Alison, 17, the Williamses' red-haired middle child.

But her forbearance lasted only so long. Alison has her father's courage and her mother's conviction. Elected in May as next fall's student-body president, a one-person office open to all races, she decided to tell school officials and, in effect, the town, to wake up and enter the second half of the 20th century. All of which assured only one thing: she can forget next year's Miss Popularity title. Teachers have shunned her. Friends have dumped her. "I was surprised by how fast it happened," she says. A recall petition was started at school. And on a local radio show, the Williamses were called Yankees and carpetbaggers. Shaken but still on her feet, Alison went to a meeting where school-board members shifted and shrugged when she asked to speak, and one finally grumbled, "Make it quick." "When they did that to her," her father says, "I said, 'Alison, however far you want to take this, I'm behind you.'"

She did get some support beyond her family. Kelly Jacobs, head of a parents' group, helped persuade the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education to investigate. Jacobs says Alison should be held up as a model for challenging accepted practice and sparking debate, no matter how sticky the issue or unpopular the cause. Instead she is bad news in a town that got along fine without her. School officials argue that race relations are good, that all students are fairly represented and that other schools use similar systems. As one teacher put it in a TV interview, "It's just always worked for us."

Alison, to her surprise, doesn't have much public support from blacks. "I don't have a problem with the way it is," says Tarra Craigen, a classmate. "I respect and appreciate what this girl is doing," says Gemenie Bowdre, a former school-board member who never challenged the elections. "But you have to look at reality." And reality, according to Bowdre, is that roughly 75% of the students are white and that blacks would not stand a chance of being elected without the policy. It was established in 1970, when the local all-black school and all-white school became one. Blacks were a majority then, and it was feared that whites would not get elected. So this is only fair, as Bowdre sees it.

At the school, which is in summer recess, a foyer sign reads WHERE GREAT MINDS COME TOGETHER. But in the office, where the black principal and the white principal sit 30 ft. apart, each said he did not know how the other felt about the controversy. "We've known for a while that the policy has to change," said Harold Kinchelow, for 24 years the black principal. But he was defensive about the status quo, which does, after all, keep two principals on the payroll. Theron Long, for 27 years the white principal, was more direct. "How can it be racist when you're trying to protect the rights of a minority?" he bristled. Maybe Alison can help: It's not racist, she explains. It's just the wrong way to do the right thing, and it assumes biases that do not necessarily exist. In the recent election, she says, three openings for senior-class representative were open to students of all races, and two of the winners were black. In another color-free contest, a black was voted prom queen. So maybe more students would look past color lines, Alison says, if adults stopped pointing them out. The Desoto County school board announced last week that it will not do anything until the federal investigation is complete, and that could take months. All Alison can do is wait, in a town that has grown even smaller now, and try to enjoy a summer that shapes up as long, hot and sticky.