At the time, the desegregation of public schools met heavy resistance by the Southern states, even after the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education in which the segregation of public schools was ruled unconstitutional. In 1960, a federal court ordered the desegregation of public schools in Louisiana, which was a year after Bridges started attending a segregated kindergarten. As a result of this order, conservative Southerners made African American assimilation into white schools a greater challenge than it already was by forcing them to pass intelligence tests while also performing extensive background checks on the children's parents. The NAACP was informed that Bridges was the youngest of only six African American students who passed this test and were admitted to William Frantz Elementary School.On her first day of school, Ruby Bridges was escorted by several armed marshals protecting her from her large crowds of people gathered around the school, yelling and throwing things in her direction. Upon her reflection on that fateful day, Bridges claimed that she "saw barricades and police officers and just people everywhere. And then when I saw all of that, I immediately thought it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of school."
As a result of the uproar taking place at William Frantz Elementary, only one teacher, Barbara Henry, was willing to teach Bridges. Ruby received her lessons individually, with Henry right by her side for a year until the overbearing adversity settled and white children who were taken out of William Frantz returned after their parents took them out because of Ruby's enrollment. Despite the opposition and hateful prejudice, she was faced with, Ruby Bridges even had perfect attendance the year she began elementary school.
Although Ruby's bravery represented a major turning point for the potential progress in American race relations, her and her family's sacrifices to do so caused many complications for them. Ruby's father lost his job, her mother became unable to shop at local grocery stores, and her grandparents lost their jobs as sharecroppers along with their land. However, these sacrifices and losses were met with the reward of more African American children being admitted into William Frantz Elementary Schools, four of which include Ruby Bridges' future nieces.Eventually, Ruby was able to graduate from a desegregated high school and maintain her legacy for decades to come. She has done so through inspiring artworks like Norman Rockwell's The Problem We All Live With as well as forming the Ruby Bridges Foundation in 1999 to advocate for tolerance and reform for race relations through education.
I thought this blog post was really interesting because the story of Ruby Bridges was something I remember briefly going over in elementary school but not in too much depth. The fact that she was only 6 years old when the whole affair took place makes it even more remarkable. I wanted to research more about what Ruby did after she graduated from high school and there was a lot of information about the Ruby Bridges Foundation. Still today, Ruby advocates for equality in schooling and seeks to protect children from harmful detriments to their education. It is inspiring to see how a trailblazer such as Ruby is using her experience to help issues that were prominent when she was six, and are still part of a larger modern movement.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.childrensdefense.org/child-watch-columns/health/2018/lessons-from-ruby-bridges/
https://www.biography.com/activist/ruby-bridges
Ruby Bridges’s dedication to standing her ground and advancing civil rights was impressive, considering she was only six at the time. I was interested in how the other kids in her school responded to Ruby joining their all-white school. As you wrote in your post, on her first day of school, she was met with large and violent crowds protesting her enrollment. On her second day of school, a woman attempted to poison her. Despite multiple, and sometimes extreme, instances of racism against Ruby, she persisted going to school. Near the end of her first year, some kids in her grade returned to school, and by her second year, it seemed as if the school’s environment had changed. The majority of children returned to Frantz School, and once again, the school almost reached full enrollment. Although Mrs. Henry’s contract wasn’t renewed and Ruby wasn’t escorted to school everyday by federal marshals, Ruby was safe, and it seemed as if no one strongly opposed her presence.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.biography.com/activist/ruby-bridges