WEDOWEE, Ala. -- Teresa Davenport would prefer to attend her senior prom Saturday with her lifelong classmates.
Instead, she and about 35 other former students of Randolph County High School will have their prom at a community center in nearby Folsom.
"We're missing out on a lot," says Davenport, 18. "But I'm standing up for what I believe."
Davenport and the lives of many others here changed after Principal Hulond Humphries threatened to cancel the prom if interracial couples planned to attend. He reportedly told student ReVonda Bowen her white father and black mother made a mistake in marrying and having a child.
When the school board reinstated the white principal after a two-week suspension, the uproar that followed created a civil rights standoff reminiscent of the 1960s in this quiet rural community, splitting neighbors along racial lines.
There were motorcades, protest rallies and a selective buying campaign aimed at some white-owned businesses. Many students such as Davenport, who is black, began boycotting area schools to attend "freedom schools" set up by black leaders at churches.
Local and national Southern Christian Leadership Conference leaders are calling for a protest march April 30 if Humphries is not fired.
Students say the rift that has separated blacks and whites who have attended school together since kindergarten is teaching them adult lessons about sacrifice and acceptance.
Bowen plans to attend the Randolph prom briefly with her white boyfriend "long enough to make a point," says the Rev. Henry Sterling, a protest leader. She has been attending regular classes at the high school so she'd be eligible to go.
"We're all hurt by all the kids who won't come back to school and participate with us, but it's really a forgiving time for us," says Leslie Hand, 16, who along with 200 others will attend Randolph's prom. "We don't hold a grudge against those who want to attend the freedom school. We just wish things could be different, but we realize they probably never will be."
Heather Wright, a 16-year-old junior who also will attend Randolph's prom, says the controversy has made her realize "the world isn't all peaches and cream, as we might think as teen-agers. We've had to learn to act like adults and not let the situation get us down and interfere with our school work and friendships with both races."
Humphries has refused to comment.
He and the school board face a civil suit filed by Bowen. And investigators from the U.S. Department of Education are probing a wide-ranging complaint filed by the NAACP that includes charges of discriminatory hiring policies, unequal treatment and disproportionate punishment of blacks at Randolph.
Humphries was criticized in a 1989 review by the Education Department for encouraging black and white students to ride separate buses, and for disciplining students unevenly.
"Our responsibility . . . is to investigate this . . . issue as soon as possible because of the negative impact this situation is having on students," says department spokesman Rodger Murphey. "Our desire is to get students back in school."
For freedom school senior Pamela Briskey, 18, "this has been a very, very hectic year. It's the students who have suffered. But this prom means a lot to us and we're going to make it a magical night to remember, no matter how many people are there."
