Introduced as, “the youngest foot soldier of the Civil Rights Movement,” Ruby Bridges gave a Clinton School lecture Tuesday about her experience as a key figure in the school desegregation crisis of the 1960s.
The unassuming first grader, and subject of Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting “The Problem We All Live With,” became the first black student to integrate a public elementary school in the South in New Orleans in November 1960.
Bridges recounted her story, from her misunderstanding that the mob outside of her elementary school was celebrating Mardi Gras, to her realization that the community didn’t want her in school based on the color of her skin. Her father, grandmother and grandfather lost their jobs because of the controversy. Despite these hardships, the family stood by their decision to send Bridges to the neighborhood’s school, she said.
Bridges said she loved her previous school and that moving to the new, white school was difficult. She credited her teacher, Barbara Henry, with making school fun.
“I knew I could not judge her based on her skin color,” Bridges said of Henry, who was white.
At just six years old she learned, Bridges said she learned Dr. Martin Luther King’s “valuable message” to never judge a person based on the color of their skin.
Since that time Bridges has continued to advocate for unity among all races, speaking at a different school almost every day. She speaks to children because she knows the next generation will decide whether to perpetuate or eliminate racism in the world, she said.
Bridges intends to revamp the curriculum of the very school she helped integrate and to “teach history the way it happened,” she said.
“Racism is a grown-up disease, and we must stop using our kids to spread it,” she said.
Video of Bridges’ lecture will be posted soon at Clinton School Speakers
.
This post was written by Clinton School student Maggie Carroll (’13).