High school student wears Black Lives Matter inspired dress to prom
The central feature of the dress is the face of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin
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Your support makes all the difference.A high school student has chosen her prom night to make an important political statement.
Milan Bolden-Morris from Florida wore a full length dress adorned with the faces of 15 black victims of police-involved deaths.
Sharing a picture of herself and her date on Instagram, Ms Bolden-Morris wrote: “Yes I’m black. Yes I’m 17. Yes God is using me to convey a message that’s bigger than me" along with a #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.
In the centre of the dress is Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old schoolboy who was shot dead by former neighbourhood watchman George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida in 2012. Mr Zimmerman was cleared of Martin’s murder .
Also featured on the dress is Michael Brown, the 18-year-old, who was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson and whose death sparked protests across his hometown of Ferguson, Missouri, and Sandra Bland – a 28-year-old black woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Texas in 2015 three days after being arrested during a traffic stop.
Ms Bolden-Morris told CNN: “When someone loses a mother, father or child in unnecessary circumstances, it should not be overlooked but addressed."
The dress was designed by Florida-based designer Terrence Torrence, who has previously designed dresses for the rapper Lil Kim, after Ms Bolden-Morris approached him.
He told the network: “With all the killings that was going on, it just hit me one day: you should put that into a dress. I wanted to paint a picture and put a story out there through my fashion and I wanted to show we could spread our message with not just posters and fliers but also garments.”
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