I am going to be telling my experience of what school was like when I was growing up and what the community was like in New Orleans at the time. In 1960 I started kindergarten with 29 other classmates. In November 1960 (two months after I started kindergarten), I can vividly remember protests outside the school grounds as we arrived to start the day. The reason behind these protests from people in the community was because an African American girl the same age as me was starting school there. I did not know this at the time, but I do now, she was the first black person to join what was a whites-only school. At the time I was just a child, but I was confused by the way African Americans were treated. Since I am now twenty-four years old, I can now fully explain my experience in the 1960s educational system and the ground-breaking history moment when Ruby Bridges joined our class.
So, it was the 16th of November 1960 when Ruby Bridges had her first day at the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. She was just 6 years old and was the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the south, therefore being the cause of advancing civil rights by joining my school. In 1959, Ruby attended a segregated kindergarten in New Orleans, and then a year later the federal court ordered the state to not be segregated anymore. The school district created tests for black children to see whether or not they could attend all-white schools. These entrance exams supposedly were to see if black children were academically capable to study at elementary schools. Ruby was not the only black child to attend though, because five other students passed the tests so they could attend my school.
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At the time because I was young, I did not quite understand the challenges that African Americans faced in my area, let alone in the state. Ruby Bridges and her mother were escorted to the school gates by multiple federal marshals on the first day that Ruby started my school. I noticed that as the seasons changed, her mother started to not walk with her to school with the marshals, just ruby and the men on her own. I wondered why it was necessary for men to walk with ruby to the school gates each day, yet I had soon begun to realize it was for Ruby`s protection. Due to her joining the school, Ruby faced blatant racism every day while walking through the gates of the school. Each day I would notice fewer and fewer children in my class coming into school. Every day a classmate of mine would just not turn up. The majority of parents kept their children at home, mine didn`t though so I witnessed many atrocious things happen throughout my school year.
People who had no business being outside the school threw objects of all sorts of things. The police set up barricades. Marshalls would continue to escort Ruby. The streets surrounding the school were in chaos for months and months after the desegregation started. There was one time when Ruby was threatened and even somewhat greeted by a woman holding a black doll in a wooden coffin. Not only did most of the population in New Orleans disagree with desegregation, but even the teachers in my and Ruby`s school didn`t like it. Only one teacher, Barbara Henry, agreed to teach her. Ruby was the only student in Barbara Henry`s class because all the other children had been pulled out by their parents so they wouldn`t interact with her. It was only Ruby, me, and a few other students that stayed at the school, while the others didn`t go in because of their parents. Though people were protesting desegregation, there were many people who supported Ruby and her family. Some sent her gifts, notes of encouragement, and even money to help her parents pay for the bills. People in her neighborhood supported the family by helping to babysit and even guarding the car she was in when they drove to school.
There are many things I noticed when I was a child that segregated African Americans from the rest of the population. Although integrating the schools was the priority of the civil rights movement, the denial of equal access to public accommodations affected all black people and not just students. They were not able to use restaurants, bathrooms, water fountains, public parks, beaches, or swimming pools used by white people. Also, they had to use different entrances to doctor's offices and sit in separate waiting rooms for them too. They had to ride at the back of streetcars and buses since white people would sit in the front. As I was young at the time, I did not understand why black people did not get the same privileges as we did. I witnessed a lot of black people being arrested in the streets for using any of these when they weren`t allowed to. They would be arrested or punished for using any of the facilities that were meant for whites only.
New Orleans back when I was a child was a hotspot for activism. Civil rights protestors used tactics such as lunch counter sit-ins, marches, and other demonstrations to call for equal rights. Of course, these efforts then led to four young girls integrating into previously all-white elementary schools on November 14th, 1960. This group included my classmate, Ruby. Through nonviolent protests, the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s stopped facilities from being non-accessible to African Americans in the south. Though there were still protests against Ruby being a pupil in our school that white people did not like. However, the movement was like a stepping stone to more equality being brought into the country for black people.
When Ruby began second grade, the anti-integration protests at school continued. However, more Black students had joined by then. The other students whose parents stopped them from attending came back again. Ruby began to make friends. You could see the change in her from her first year. A smile was constantly on her face, laughing, and playing at recess. As Bridges worked her way through school, her time at William Frantz became less difficult as she made happy memories. She was verbally abused less, more people started to treat her kinder too. Although, from what I witnessed, she still was treated unfairly by some of her class peers, teachers, and parent of our peers yet she had many people to support her.
When I was a child, I would listen in on my parent`s conversations. I would sometimes hear them talk about the movement and how they are positively backing it up. However, they knew people who disliked the idea profoundly. It would divide white people for backing up the movement and having positive views toward the idea of desegregation. As federal courts began chipping away at Jim Crow statutes during the middle of the 20th century, southern places in the states were forced to confront long histories of racial inequality against black people. There were no exceptions in New Orleans. Jim Crow laws were a lot of state and local statutes that legalized racial segregation in America. It was named after a black minstrel character. The minstrel show was an American form of racist entertainment that was on TV when I was younger. It was never played in my household; however, it was on TV screens on shopfronts, and I had seen snippets of the show. Each show consisted of various acts and performances that depicted people, more specifically people of African descent. The shows were performed by mostly white people in make-up to play the role of black people. The Jim crow law denied many things such as allowing black people to vote, hold down jobs, and have good educations, along with many other things it prevented. As a result of these laws, those who attempted to defy them often faced being arrested, having to pay fines, jail sentences, violence towards them, and death too.
our hometown began to grow distant from my family because we believed in equality. Though this did not change my mother's and father`s views. They believe that the civil rights movement leaders and members were for the greater good. They always stood strong on their views and would often join in peaceful protests. This is another reason why they were disliked by many of our neighbors. We would have our house littered with eggs, stones thrown at our windows, and car windows smashed. As time went on and mum and dad stood strong, the movement progressed. With help from Martin Luther King Jr, members picketed local businesses and public institutions and held sit-ins at lunch counters and public buildings. This is how the sit-in lunches first started in my hometown, because of the activists.
Though there were protests and activists against desegregation, I feel as though Ruby Bridges had an astronomical impact on the civil rights movement and desegregation. People would not be seen even speaking to a black person in my hometown, they would look at them with sour faces. And yet ruby had some folks interacting with her kindly, she would play with children in school, and she was invited to classmates' houses for playdates. I am proud to say we became friends after she joined William Frantz Elementary school. As we still keep in touch after Ruby graduated from a de-segregated high school, I know that she became a travel agent. She also got married and had 4 children who were sons, I have two children who both are friends with her sons. Ruby later wrote about her early experiences in school and growing up in two books and received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award.
A lifelong activist for racial equality, in 1999, Ruby established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. I also have been a member of the Ruby Bridges Foundation. The foundation is promoted equality and ends racism.
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