Alabama student sues principal who nixed interracial prom dating

Jet, April 4, 1994

A high school principal who threatened to cancel his school's prom if interracial couples attended has been suspended with pay pending an investigation into his actions.

Meanwhile, Hulond Humphries, the principal of Randolph County High School in Wedowee, AL, has been hit with a lawsuit filed by a mixed-race student at the school.

Humphries, troubles started Feb. 24, when the 55-year-old principal called an assembly of 11th and 12th graders to discourage interracial dating at his school's upcoming prom.

The principal allegedly told students there would be no prom if interracial couples planned to attend.

Humphries then asked students who were considering taking a date of a different race to the April 23 prom to identify themselves.

That's when ReVonda Bowen, an 11th-grader whose mother is Black and father is White, stood up during the assembly and asked what race her date should be.

The 16-year-old Bowen, who recently filed a civil suit in Alabama District Court against Humphries and the Randolph County School Board, said the principal proceeded to tell her that her parents "had made a mistake" and that he didn't want anyone else to make the same mistake (JET, March 28).

The statement hurt several students at the school, which is 62 percent White and 38 percent Black, and caused Bowen to break into tears.

As a result of Humphries, conduct at the assembly, Bowen "suffered humiliation, embarrassment, and emotional distress so severe that no reasonable person could be expected to endure it," the lawsuit charges.

The suit also states that Humphries, comments were "intentional, extreme, outrageous, malicious, and in willful derogation" of Bowen's civil rights.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount of punitive and compensatory damages for harm caused to Bowen by Humphries, statements, as well as his policy of discouraging interracial relationships among the school's 680 students.

The principal retracted his statement a day later, but the harm had been done. The overt racist comments ignited a civil rights furor led by members of the NAACP and the SCLC, who called for the principal's resignation.

During a jam-packed school board meeting on the matter, attended by SCLC President Joseph Lowery among others, four White school board members and the only Black member voted to suspend Humphries with pay pending an investigation.

At Jet presstime, it was not known how long the investigation would take. Bowen, who is president of the junior class, told the New York Times that she's "never seen the school as racially divided."

"I associate with Black kids and White kids and not with just one group, and the fact that my father is White and my mother Black never has been a problem," she said. As for Humphries, Bowen has repeatedly said she "just wants him out."

The race-related controversy, which has all but divided the tiny east-central Alabama town of 800, is not the first for Humphries.

In 1989, a review by the Federal Education's Department's civil rights division said Humphries encouraged Black and White students to ride separate buses. The report also noted that the principal disciplined Black students more often than White students, and punished Blacks more harshly than Whites, even though their offenses were the same.

Both NAACP and SCLC leaders have vowed to monitor the situation in Wedowee.