Ruby Bridges

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Lore & Background

Ruby Bridges was the eldest of five children born to Abon and Lucille Bridges. When she was four years old, the family relocated from Tylertown, Mississippi, to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1960, at age six, her parents responded to a request from the NAACP and volunteered her to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system, though her father was hesitant. She attended a segregated kindergarten in 1959, and in early 1960 she was one of six black children in New Orleans to pass the test determining whether they could attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. Two of the six stayed at their old school; Bridges went to Frantz alone, while three other girls—Gail Etienne, Leona Tate, and Tessie Prevost—were transferred to the all-white McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School. All four 6-year-old girls were escorted by federal marshals on their first day. On November 14, 1960, Bridges entered William Frantz Elementary. White parents pulled their children out, and all teachers except one—Barbara Henry, from Boston—refused to teach a black child. For over a year, Henry taught Bridges alone, "as if she were teaching a whole class." Bridges and her mother spent the first day in the principal's office; on the second day, a white student broke the boycott when a 34-year-old Methodist minister, Lloyd Anderson Foreman, walked his five-year-old daughter Pam through the angry mob, saying, "I simply want the privilege of taking my child to school." Bridges remained the only child in her class until the following year. She faced daily threats, including a woman who threatened to poison her and another who held up a black baby doll in a coffin. U.S. Marshals allowed her to eat only food from home and barred her from recess. Child psychiatrist Robert Coles provided counseling and later wrote a children's book, The Story of Ruby Bridges, donating royalties to the Ruby Bridges Foundation. The Bridges family suffered: her father lost his job as a gas station attendant, the grocery store the family shopped at would no longer let them shop there, her grandparents—sharecroppers in Mississippi—were turned off their land, and Abon and Lucille Bridges separated. Some community members showed support, including a neighbor who provided her father with a new job.

Reader's Guide

Ruby Bridges's significance lies in her role as a symbol of the federal enforcement of school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education. Her solitary attendance at William Frantz Elementary, under the protection of federal marshals, highlighted the intense resistance to integration in the South and the personal costs borne by those who challenged it. The Norman Rockwell painting The Problem We All Live With, published in Look magazine on January 14, 1964, immortalized her walk to school and became an iconic image of the civil rights movement. Bridges's later work through the Ruby Bridges Foundation, formed in 1999, promotes "the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences." Her story has been adapted into a 1998 made-for-TV movie, Ruby Bridges, and a children's book by Robert Coles. In November 2007, the Children's Museum of Indianapolis unveiled a permanent exhibit documenting her life, including an authentic re-creation of her first grade classroom. In 2010, Bridges had a 50th year reunion at William Frantz Elementary with Pam Foreman Testroet, the first white child to break the boycott. On July 15, 2011, she met President Barack Obama at the White House, where the Rockwell painting was displayed in the West Wing just outside the Oval Office. Bridges lost her home in Eastern New Orleans to catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and played a significant role in fighting for William Frantz Elementary to remain open.

Did You Know?

• Ruby Bridges was the eldest of five children and spent much time taking care of her younger siblings, though she also enjoyed playing jump rope and softball and climbing trees.
• On her first day at William Frantz Elementary, Bridges thought the angry crowd outside was Mardi Gras, saying, "Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras."
• Former U.S. Deputy Marshal Charles Burks recalled of Bridges, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier."
• The immaculate clothing Bridges wore in photographs from her first weeks at Frantz was sent to her family by a relative of child psychiatrist Robert Coles; Bridges says her family could never have afforded those dresses, socks, and shoes.
• On January 8, 2001, Bridges was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton.