Ruby Bridges

Ruby Bridges is an American civil rights activist who became famous as a child. In 1960, when she was six years old, she became the first Black student to attend an all-white elementary school in the South. Her brave walk into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, helped end segregation in American schools.

Ruby was born in Mississippi in 1954. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Brown v. Board of Education. The Court said that segregated schools, where Black and white children were taught in separate buildings, were against the law. But many Southern states ignored the ruling. Six years later, Ruby's school in New Orleans was finally ordered to let Black students in.

Ruby took a special test to qualify. She passed. On November 14, 1960, four U.S. Marshals drove her to school. They walked her past angry crowds of white parents who shouted insults and held up signs. One woman threatened to poison her. Another held up a Black baby doll inside a small coffin. Ruby was so young she thought it was a parade. She kept walking and did not cry.

Inside the school, almost every white family pulled their children out. Most teachers refused to teach her. A young teacher named Barbara Henry, who had just moved from Boston, agreed to teach Ruby. For nearly a full school year, Mrs. Henry taught a class of one. Ruby ate lunch alone and played alone at recess. Federal marshals stood guard outside her classroom every day.

Ruby's family paid a high price too. Her father lost his job. The grocery store stopped letting her family shop there. Her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were forced off their farm. But neighbors and strangers across the country sent the family money, food, and letters of support.

A famous painter named Norman Rockwell saw photographs of Ruby walking to school. In 1964, he painted a picture called The Problem We All Live With. It shows a small Black girl in a white dress, walking past a wall stained with a thrown tomato, surrounded by tall marshals. The painting later hung in the White House when Barack Obama was president.

Ruby grew up, married, and had four sons. She started the Ruby Bridges Foundation to teach kids about kindness and tolerance. She still gives talks to schools and continues the work she began at age six. The little girl in the white dress is still walking forward.