RUBY NELL BRIDGES NOVEMBER 1960

by Murphy BrowneToronto, OntarioCanada

© Saturday, November 14, 2015

"On November 14, 1960, a tiny six-year-old black child, surrounded by federal marshals, walked through a mob of screaming segregationists and into her school. From where she sat in the office, Ruby Bridges could see parents marching through the halls and taking their children out of classrooms. The next day, Ruby walked through the angry mob once again and into a school where she saw no other students. The white children did not go to school that day, and they wouldn't go to school for many days to come. Surrounded by racial turmoil, Ruby, the only student in a classroom with one wonderful teacher, learned to read and add."

Description of the book �Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges� published 1999 by Ruby Bridges

On Monday November 14, 1960 a 6 year old African American child integrated the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ruby Nell Bridges had recently celebrated her sixth birthday on September 8, 1960 when she became the public face of desegregation in New Orleans. On May 17, 1954, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling in the Civil Rights desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas which made segregation of public schools a violation of the 14th amendment and therefore unconstitutional. One year later on May 31, 1955, Warren read the Court's unanimous decision instructing all states to begin desegregation plans "with all deliberate speed." New Orleans� schools finally began integration "with all deliberate speed" 5 years after the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court.Ruby Nell Bridges was born just four months after the US Supreme Court�s decision to desegregate schools, on September 8, 1954 in Tylertown, Mississippi to Lucille and Abon Bridges. At the time Ruby was born her parents and grandparents were tenant farmers (sharecroppers) on land owned by White families. When she was 4 years old, her parents moved with their children to New Orleans. In the 1999 published book �Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges� Lucille Bridges gave the reason for the move: �Sharecropping is hard work. On the day before Ruby was born, I carried 90 pounds of cotton on my back. I wanted a better life for Ruby.� In New Orleans, Abon Bridges worked as a gas station attendant while Lucille Bridges did several night jobs to help support their growing family which then included two younger sons and a younger daughter. In �Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges� Ruby Bridges remembered: �My mother sometimes took night jobs, like cleaning rooms in one of the city�s hotels. I remember my mother taking a job making caskets.�

On Monday, November 14 when 6 year old Ruby Bridges entered William Frantz Elementary School it was after a summer of White politicians in New Orleans trying every trick to resist integration of the public schools. In 1956 U.S. District Court Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the desegregation of the New Orleans public schools. The New Orleans School Board launched a series of appeals which failed. In 1960, Judge Wright outlined a plan that required the integration of the schools on a grade-per-year basis, beginning with the first grade. The School Board insisted that psychological and educational tests would be administered to African American kindergartners to determine the best candidates for integration. Ruby Bridges was one of six children selected after passing the tests. The Bridges were the only African American family who took the risk of sending their child into the William Frantz Elementary School.

On the morning of the first day of school, Ruby and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals. Because of the furious mob Bridges did not get to class on the first day of school, November 14, 1960. She and her mother spent the day

in the principal�s office where they witnessed furious White men and women taking their children out of the school. Bridges wrote of her recollections from that day and the following day: �We spent that whole day sitting in the principal's office. Through the window, I saw white parents pointing at us and yelling, then rushing their children out of the school. In the uproar I never got to my classroom. The marshals drove my mother and me to school again the next day. I tried not to pay attention to the mob. Someone had a black doll in a coffin, and that scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.� On the second day she did enter a classroom because one teacher agreed to teach her even though no White parents would allow their children to sit in the classroom with her. Bridges spent her entire grade one year protected by Federal Marshals, she was the only child in the classroom and she was never allowed to leave the class even for recess.

Meanwhile the White mob, mostly women, continued to riot outside the school, swearing, throwing objects and threatening death to the 6 year old. It is almost unbelievable that the women, many of them mothers of children the same age as the then 6 year old Bridges, vowed to murder the child simply because she entered the same school as their children. One woman promised to poison Bridges which prompted the decision to not allow her to eat anything that was not prepared at home. The family suffered repercussions because of their decision to have their child integrate the all white school. Abon Bridges was fired from his job and his parents who were tenant farmers in Mississippi were thrown off the land by the White farmer/owner for whom they had laboured for 25 years.

The family received a great deal of support from the African American community in their New Orleans neighbourhood. Speaking of the support the family received, during an interview aired on PBS Bridges said: �I don't think that my parents could have gone through what they did without the whole community coming together. We had friends that would come over and help dress me for school. Even when I rode to school, there were people in the neighborhood that would walk behind the car. I actually didn't live that far from school, and so they would actually just come out and walk to school with me.� Not surprisingly the six year old child began to suffer psychologically including experiencing nightmares. She was supported by Dr. Robert Coles a White American child psychiatrist. Celebrated White American author John Ernst Steinbeck witnessed the horrific abuse to which the 6 year old was subjected. In �Travels With Charlie� he wrote: �The show opened on time. Sound the sirens. Motorcycle cops. Then two big black cars filled with big men in blond felt hats pulled up in front of the school. The crowd seemed to hold its breath. Four big marshals got out of each car and from somewhere in the automobiles they extracted the littlest negro girl you ever saw, dressed in shining starchy white, with new white shoes on feet so little they were almost round. Her face and little legs were very black against the white.� Steinbeck also described a scene which would possibly give adults nightmares much less a six year old child: �The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did not look at the howling crowd, but from the side the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. The men turned her around like a doll and then the strange procession moved up the broad walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite because the men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle of her first step, the weight bore her down and her little round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall guards. Slowly they climbed the steps and entered the school.� Steinbeck�s descriptive essay is said to have inspired the now famous 1964 Norman Rockwell painting, "The Problem We All Live With."

In 2015 schools in the USA are open to students of all races and this is because of the courage of African Americans who risked their lives and their children�s lives. It was just 3 years before, in September 1957 that a group (Little Rock Nine) of mostly 14 year olds risked their lives to integrate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Today it is hardly likely that African Americans would

be threatened with lynching if they attend any school. However some of the horrific scenes that are documented on video of police brutality of African American students in and out of schools are reminiscent of the abuse African American students suffered as they integrated all white schools following Brown v. Board of Education. While there are no stories of White parents and students rioting to prevent African American students entering schools the comments that accompany the stories of police brutality are reminiscent of those riots. The members of the mob now hide behind their computer screens and anonymously lynch the characters of the African American students who are brutalized by police.

by Murphy BrowneToronto, OntarioCanada

© Saturday, November 14, 2015