Edwards, 18, said she wasn’t allowed inside the prom after school officials told her the Confederate flag sweetheart wedding dresses was "offensive and inappropriate.""We asked why they thought that, but they kept saying the same thing over and over," she said Monday. "We kept asking people walking inside black and white - and everyone said they loved it. Two black women even went off on the principal. They were upset with the principal. No one was upset with me."
School officials said a teacher warned Edwards about two months ago that the dress might not be acceptable. The teacher, who served as prom sponsor, expressed concern and suggested to Edwards in February that she should clear the idea with the principal, but Edwards did not do so, said Eddie Pruett, director of schools for the Gibson County School System.Pruett said there have been race-related issues at Gibson County High School in recent years and that Principal James Hughes thought Edwards’ dress could have caused a problem."She was told because of the sweetheart wedding dress and what it would look like, it would be considered inappropriate," Pruett said. "She had talked with the prom sponsor and they told her it would be inappropriate. I feel like Hughes followed legal precedents set by other court cases. Students have legal rights, and we don’t infringe upon those. But we have to follow legal precedents, and if there is a reason to believe something could happen, we don’t wait until after the fact to do something."

Edwards said she told several people about her idea and many liked it. Only the one teacher said the dress was a bad idea and that she should check with school administration, she said."I didn’t talk with administration because we wore rebel flags all through my four years at Gibson County," she said. "I didn’t ask for approval because I didn’t think I needed to. I had one teacher tell me it was a bad idea. but I just thought she only said that because it would offend people. But I asked a bunch of people before I had the white floor length sheath sweetheart satin prom dress with appliquess made and they all loved the idea."

"You have single-handedly saved prom for countless girls," Christina Luwisch, senior class president at Cabrini High School, told the senior from Washington D.C.West, an 18-year-old who attends Georgetown Day School, has become a heroine nationally after her simple gesture to help Hurricane Katrina victims turned into an outpouring of generosity: She wanted to collect a line wedding dress maybe as many as a hundred, she hoped.What she wound up with was 2,800 dresses enough to go to 10 ravaged high schools. And shoes. And handbags, jewelry and computers. And more.
The assembly to honor West, on the eve of the dance, turned into a collective outpouring of grief for loved ones lost, family members displaced, homes gone. As ceiling fans twirled, the Cabrini girls wiped tears away with the sleeves of their uniforms.Pig-tailed senior Katie Bourgeois told her classmates that she had bought her brown satin wedding dresses sweetheart the week before Katrina hit but she hadn’t thought to take it with her when she evacuated."It drowned in the flood," she said."It’s not the dresses," Cabrini Principal Yvonne Hrapmann reminded her charges. It’s about how "one thought, one gesture" could become a national cause.West said she just wanted to give the students a reminder of what it was like to feel normal again."The drive has really given the girls hope," West said. "They’ll be able to look back on prom as a point where they were just able to be 17- and 18-year-old girls and be able, in that moment, to forget about what’s going wrong."

West’s inspiration came, like so many genius ideas before it, amid the crowded racks of the fashion discounter Loehmann’s. West, the reigning Miss D.C. National Teenager, was taking a break from the stress of her winter finals to think ahead to the joys of spring and buying her own white flower dresses princess with bateau neckline."I was looking through all the sequins and the beads and the glitter, and I realized that in New Orleans so many girls wouldn’t feel that joy you feel at prom.all because of the devastation of Katrina," West recalled. "I thought I could help restore at least one of their high school traditions that they wouldn’t have otherwise."