down together for the first time in history . Ruby Dean Dupree Mayes arrived two hours early for the festivities . She did n't sleep the night before . `` It 's like waiting for Santa Claus to arrive . I 'm so excited , '' said Mayes , who drove more than 330 miles from Tennessee to attend . Mayes went to Ballard-Hudson High , the city 's black high school , whose most famous students include singers Otis Redding and Little Richard . She came this day `` to celebrate and commemorate . '' `` I could not pass this event up , '' she said . `` I never dreamed of this moment -- just the realization of knowing that we had come together , at last . '' As the 1959 graduates arrived , they welcomed one another . Many first greeted people of their own race . Some had n't seen particular classmates in the 50 years since they earned their diplomas . Gradually , they began mixing and mingling . There was a commonality -- a need to come together for their children , their grandchildren and the generations to follow . Discuss the
Macon , Georgia -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Bettye Webb-Hayes wo n't ever forget the day her son posed a question that stopped her in her tracks . `` Mom , '' the fourth-grader asked , `` am I white ? '' It was a question she had never asked her own parents . It was something you did n't talk about in the days of the segregated South -- especially when your mom was white and your father was a mix of African-American and Native American . She went to the black schools of Macon , Georgia . Now , her son was asking probing questions . `` Why would you ask me that ? '' she said . `` Because everybody at school calls me a honky , '' said the young Cordell , a light-skinned African-American . Twenty-seven years have passed since that conversation . Bettye and her son recently traveled back to Macon to face something that 's been omnipresent their whole lives : the coming together of white and black . They returned for a one-of-a-kind 50th high school gathering . The classes of 1959 , once segregated by race as well as gender , sat