But Bridges stayed at the school despite retaliation against her family. Grocery stores refused to sell to her mother, Lucille. And her father, Abon, lost his job, according to the National Park Service. The toll was so hard on their marriage that by the time Bridges graduated from sixth grade, they had separated, she told NPR.
Eventually, though, Bridges made it to second grade. And when she did, the school's incoming first grade class had eight Black students, the EJI said.
Barbara Henry, a white Boston native, was the only teacher willing to accept Ruby, and all year, she was a class of one. Ruby ate lunch alone and sometimes played with her teacher at recess, but she never missed a day of school that year.
While some families supported her bravery — and some northerners sent money to aid her family — others protested throughout the city. The Bridges family suffered for their courage: Abon lost his job, and grocery stores refused to sell to Lucille.
Her share-cropping grandparents were evicted from the farm where they had lived for a quarter-century. Ruby graduated from a desegregated high school, became a travel agent, married and had four sons. She was reunited with her first teacher, Henry, in the mid s, and for a time the pair did speaking engagements together. Ruby later wrote about her early experiences in two books and received the Carter G.
Woodson Book Award. A lifelong activist for racial equality, in , Ruby established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. In , she was made an honorary deputy marshal in a ceremony in Washington, DC. MLA - Michals, Debra. National Women's History Museum, Date accessed. A few white families braved the mob to bring their kids to class, but it wasn't until spring that Bridges was allowed to see them, when Henry would bring them into her classroom for part of the day.
Bridges, now 65 and a civil rights speaker, author and advocate, wasn't the first Black child to integrate a school. She was born in , the same year the Supreme Court ended "separate but equal" education of African American children in Brown v. Board of Education. Southern states ignored or blocked the order. The year Ruby went to first grade, three other little Black girls were going to first grade in another New Orleans white school.
Ruby Bridges: Federal marshals came to the house and knocked on the door. I remember seeing four very tall white men and not really understanding why they were there. They explained to my parents that "we were sent by the president of the United States, and we are here to escort you and your daughter to school today.
I remember getting into the car with them and driving to the new school that was very close to my house. It was actually my neighborhood school, but because it was a white school, I wasn't able to attend before this very day.
Upon arriving in front of the school, I saw mobs and mobs of people out in front of the school, and they were screaming and shouting, throwing things, waving their hands. Being 6 years old, I know that what spared me was the innocence of a child, because seeing that mob outside and living in New Orleans, I was accustomed to Mardi Gras and actually thought it was Mardi Gras that day.
People often asked me, "Were you afraid? Once I got inside of the school, parents — white parents — refused to allow their children to go to school with me. So they rushed in and they took out their children. Over kids walked out of school that day, and it was because I was there.
My teacher actually came from Boston to teach me. There were few kids in the school, and some of the teachers who remained refused to have anything to do with me. Have you processed the level of racism and anger and hatred that it took for those people to be threatened or not want to be with this 6-year-old girl?
The worst part about it for me was just being lonely. Wanting someone to play with. Henry was an amazing teacher, and she did everything she could to keep my mind off of what was happening outside, because you could hear them screaming and shouting, and then that went on all day long. But it wasn't until we were actually shooting the movie — there was a Disney movie done back in — and it was so surreal because it was like standing outside and watching your life play out before you.
I remember when we came to the scene where the little girl had to go through the crowd and into the building. That was the very first time that I was able to see it from a totally different perspective. It was the very first time that I realized that they were not there just to frighten me. Bridges had another ally outside the school: Robert Coles, a white child psychiatrist who had witnessed the scenes outside the school, and volunteered to support her and her family, visiting the home on a weekly basis.
Coles went on to establish a career studying the effects of desegregation on schoolchildren. It later emerged that it was one of his relatives who had sent Bridges her smart school clothes, which her family could never have afforded.
Things changed gradually. Over the course of that first year, a few white parents let their children back into the school. At first they were kept separate from Bridges.
It all sort of came together: a very rude awakening. I often say today that really was my first introduction to racism. It was also an insight into the origins of racism, she later realised. We pass it on to our kids, and it continues from one generation to the next.
That moment proved that to me. By the time Bridges returned to the school for the second year, the furore had pretty much died down. There were no protests, she was in a normal-sized class with other children, predominantly white but with a few more African Americans.
The overall situation had improved, although Bridges was upset that Henry had left the school they have remained lifelong friends. Every year, though, more and more Black students came to the school. By the time she moved on, high schools had been desegregated for nearly a decade, although Black and white pupils still did not mix.
Its sports teams were named the Rebels, and had a Confederate flag on their badge, which the Black students fought to change. The school was renamed Frederick Douglass high school in the s, and its teams are now the Bobcats. Bridges says she did not have much of a career plan when she finished school.
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