No interracial couples at prom

In , Laub returned to document the historical event and learned that one of her previous subjects, a young black man, had been murdered. Now, Laub has turned her study of racial tensions in Montgomery County and the killing of Justin Patterson into a documentary. Musician John Legend produced the film. I photographed the segregated proms of , and when the photos were published a lot of the white families resented me because I was exposing what felt like a dirty secret. When I came back, I had to go in front of parents and school administrators to explain and ask permission to photograph the first integrated prom. I fell in love with the teenagers of Montgomery.

A high school principal in this east Alabama town was suspended with pay on Monday after students said he tried to ban interracial couples from the prom and called a mixed-race student a "mistake" he wanted to prevent others from making. The Randolph County School Board took the action against the year-old principal, Hulond Humphries, who is white, at a tense meeting attended by more than parents and students. The vote was 4 to 2, with the sole black member voting with three whites to suspend Mr. Humphries until the board completed an investigation into accusations that he made racially discriminatory remarks in trying to cancel the April 23 prom. The dispute has fractured the iron discipline Mr. Humphries had imposed in his 26 years at Randolph County High, a school of students.

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. More Videos No longer dated: Prom finally integrated Story highlights Students from a Georgia high school hosted their first integrated prom last weekend For more than 40 years, students' proms were private, racially segregated events After prom story went viral, people offered up support, cash, dresses, DJ Superintendent: High school will consider hosting prom in

Prom season is always exciting to me. I attended my senior prom in with a young black man who later became my husband. I was a student at Central Dauphin East Senior High School, where in the early 's less than 10 percent of the student population was African-American.