Ruby Bridges desegregates her school - November 14th, 1960

On this day in 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first Black student to attend a previously all-white school in New Orleans. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that explores the highs and lows of everyday history.
I'm Gay Bluesier, and in this episode, we're looking back
at the fateful day when a young black girl braved

(00:21):
a mob of virulent white protesters just to get to school.
The day was November fourteenth, nineteen sixty six year old
Ruby Bridges became the first black student to attend a

(00:41):
previously all white school in New Orleans. Her arrival was
met with extreme hostility by the city's resident racists. They
gathered in droves outside the school and proceeded to harass, insult,
and threaten the young girl as she made her way
into the building. Thankfully, Ruby was and alone. She was
escorted by her mother and by four federal marshals who'd

(01:04):
been stationed there for her protection. Her courage that day
was preserved in photographs and later inspired a famous painting
by Norman Rockwell entitled The Problem We All Live With.
Ruby didn't know it at the time, but she had
just become the youngest face of the American civil rights movement,
as well as the latest target of rabid segregationists. Ruby

(01:28):
Nell Bridges was born on September eighth, nineteen fifty four,
in Tylertown, Mississippi. She was the oldest of five children
born to Lucille and a Bond Bridges. Her father was
a Korean War veteran who made his living as a sharecropper,
but when Ruby was two years old, he moved their
family to New Orleans, Louisiana, in search of a better job.

(01:50):
The year of Ruby's birth coincided with a major shift
in federal law and American society. The Supreme Court's landmark
ruling in Brown versus the Border of Education made racial
segregation illegal in public schools. The decision caused an uproar
in the Southern States, and many communities and schools continued
to resist integration for years to come. The city of

(02:14):
New Orleans was one of those places. The local school
board defied the Supreme Court's ruling and a federal court
order for a full four years. Then, in May of
nineteen sixty, Judge J. Skelly Wright issued another federal order.
It was a fairly lenient one, allowing for the gradual
desegregation of New Orleans public schools beginning with the first grade. Nonetheless,

(02:39):
the school board pushed back, ultimately convincing Judge Right to
require an entrance exam for African American students. Under that
restrictive plan, any black student in New Orleans who wanted
to transfer to a formerly all white school would have
to pass a test proving their academic ability. In the end,

(02:59):
only six of the one hundred and thirty seven first
graders who applied that year were accepted, and Ruby Bridges
was one of them. Her parents were split on whether
to allow her to attend the all white elementary school
just a few blocks from their home. Her father objected strongly,
fearing that Ruby's enrollment might lead to mob violence, just

(03:20):
as it had in Little Rock, Arkansas, three years earlier.
Ruby's mother, however, was adamant that she'd be given the
chance for education that her parents had been denied a bond.
Bridges eventually agreed to the enrollment, but the family made
sure federal marshals would be on hand in case there
was trouble. Meanwhile, the school district continued to stall the

(03:42):
black children's admittance, and by the time they finally set
a date in mid November, two of the six applicants
had decided not to attend after all. That left Ruby
as the only black student assigned to William France Elementary.
The other remaining three were sent to a different school
on the same day. When Ruby arrived on the morning

(04:03):
of November fourteenth, she was met by dozens of angry protesters,
many of whom had been organized by the local White
Citizens Council. They accosted Ruby and her mother with racial slurs, insults,
and death threats. Some carried signs emblazoned with hateful slogans
like all I want for Christmas is a clean white school.

(04:25):
One white woman even held up a miniature coffin with
a black baby doll inside. Most of the crowd's malice
didn't register with Ruby. She hadn't been told that she
would be attending a formerly all white school or that
white people would be up in arms about it. To her,
all the screaming and chanting and waving of flags just

(04:45):
looked like people celebrating, like they did at Marty Gras.
But while Ruby couldn't read the signs or make out
the screaming, she understood the message behind the doll and
the coffin. The sight of it was seared into her mind,
and she later report to dreaming of it throughout the
school year. Although she made it inside safely that day,
Ruby didn't get to attend any classes. Instead, she sat

(05:09):
alone in the principal's office while angry white parents made
a scene outside, pulling their own children out of school
and vowing not to bring them back. A similar scene
played out at McDonough Elementary, where the other black first
graders had been sent. Within a week, nearly all of
the white children assigned to the newly integrated schools in
New Orleans had been withdrawn. On her second day, Ruby

(05:33):
went to her assigned classroom and met her teacher, Barbara Henry,
a white woman from Boston who had been the only
one willing to teach her for the first several days.
They were the only ones in the entire school, as
the rest of the faculty and students had stayed home
in protest. Some white parents eventually crossed the picket line

(05:53):
and returned their kids to school, but even then they
were kept separate from Ruby. The principal would take them,
she later explained, and she would hide them so that
they would never see me, and I would never see them.
I spent the entire year in an empty classroom with
my teacher, missus Henry. I remember hearing voices, but I
never saw kids, and it kept me wondering where the

(06:15):
voices were coming from, if they were real at all.
Ruby attended school every day that year, escorted by her
mother and the Federal Marshals. They were confronted by a
racist mob on a daily basis for several months, but
gradually the crowd thinned away. It took most of the
school year, but missus Henry also managed to convince the

(06:36):
principal to allow Ruby to join her fellow students. The
girl was eager to make new friends and finally have
someone to play with at Recess besides her teacher. Sadly, though,
the first meeting didn't go as planned, as Ruby later recounted, quote,
a little boy said to me, I can't play with you.
My mom said not to play with you, and he

(06:57):
called me the N word, and that's when I had
my eye a ha moment. The reason why there were
no kids here was because of me and the color
of my skin. That's why I can't code to Recess.
And it's not Marty Krass. I didn't realize what was
going on around me until he told me, and that
was my first encounter with racism. He introduced it to me.

(07:18):
As an adult, Ruby realized that the boy wasn't expressing
his own prejudice, he was merely repeating what his parents
had told him. Or, in other words, as Ruby put it, quote,
racism is learned behavior. We pass it on to our kids,
and it continues from one generation to the next. The
Bridges family was hit hard by that cycle of hatred.

(07:41):
Ruby's father was fired from his job as a gas
station attendant, her mother was refused service at several local
grocery stores, and her grandparents were evicted from the Mississippi
farm where they had worked as sharecroppers for twenty five years. Luckily,
some northerners sent money and other gifts to help keep
the family afloat, and the Bridge's friends and neighbors offered

(08:04):
their support as well. They made it possible for Ruby
to continue attending France Elementary, and over time she was
joined by other black students. The rest of her education
proceeded without major incident, and she went on to graduate
from a desegregated high school. In her adult life, Ruby
worked as a travel agent for American Express for fifteen

(08:26):
years and got to travel the world as part of
the position. She later married and had four sons before
returning to work as an activist for racial equality. She
embarked on several speaking tours in the mid nineteen nineties,
joined by her first grade teacher, missus Henry. Ruby also
authored a number of children's books about her early experiences

(08:47):
and established the Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and
combat prejudice through education. The prejudice she was subjected to
as a child left an indelible mark on her life,
but rather than despairing over the past, Ruby has committed
herself to building a more hopeful future because, as her
foundation's motto says, racism is a grown up disease and

(09:10):
we must stop using our children to spredit. I'm Gabe
Lucier and hopefully you now know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. If you'd like to
keep up with the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at TDI HC Show. And if you have

(09:30):
any comments or suggestions, you can always send them my
way by writing to this day at iHeartMedia dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays, for producing the show, and thanks
to you for listening. I'll see you back here again
tomorrow for another day in history class.