On Monday November 14, 1960 a six year old African American child was the first to integrate the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was subjected to vile abuse from white men and women who were bent on preventing African Americans from living as human beings with inherent human rights. This child was threatened with death by vicious mobs of white men and women who took the time to riot every day for an entire year at the school. Six year old Ruby Nell Bridges had to be protected from the snarling, cursing mob of white adults every day by armed Federally appointed Marshalls as she entered the school. This was 55 years ago in the USA!
2. in the principal’s office where they witnessed furious White men and women
taking their children out of the school. Bridges wrote of her recollections from
that day and the following day: ’We spent that whole day sitting in the
principal's office. Through the window, I saw white parents pointing at us and
yelling, then rushing their children out of the school. In the uproar I never
got to my classroom. The marshals drove my mother and me to school again the
next day. I tried not to pay attention to the mob. Someone had a black doll in a
coffin, and that scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.’ On
the second day she did enter a classroom because one teacher agreed to teach her
even though no White parents would allow their children to sit in the classroom
with her. Bridges spent her entire grade one year protected by Federal Marshals,
she was the only child in the classroom and she was never allowed to leave the
class even for recess.
Meanwhile the White mob, mostly women, continued to riot outside the school,
swearing, throwing objects and threatening death to the 6 year old. It is almost
unbelievable that the women, many of them mothers of children the same age as
the then 6 year old Bridges, vowed to murder the child simply because she
entered the same school as their children. One woman promised to poison Bridges
which prompted the decision to not allow her to eat anything that was not
prepared at home. The family suffered repercussions because of their decision to
have their child integrate the all white school. Abon Bridges was fired from his
job and his parents who were tenant farmers in Mississippi were thrown off the
land by the White farmer/owner for whom they had laboured for 25 years.
The family received a great deal of support from the African American community
in their New Orleans neighbourhood. Speaking of the support the family received,
during an interview aired on PBS Bridges said: ’I don't think that my parents
could have gone through what they did without the whole community coming
together. We had friends that would come over and help dress me for school. Even
when I rode to school, there were people in the neighborhood that would walk
behind the car. I actually didn't live that far from school, and so they would
actually just come out and walk to school with me.’
Not surprisingly the six year old child began to suffer psychologically
including experiencing nightmares. She was supported by Dr. Robert Coles a White
American child psychiatrist. Celebrated White American author John Ernst
Steinbeck witnessed the horrific abuse to which the 6 year old was subjected. In
’Travels With Charlie’ he wrote: ’The show opened on time. Sound the sirens.
Motorcycle cops. Then two big black cars filled with big men in blond felt hats
pulled up in front of the school. The crowd seemed to hold its breath. Four big
marshals got out of each car and from somewhere in the automobiles they
extracted the littlest negro girl you ever saw, dressed in shining starchy
white, with new white shoes on feet so little they were almost round. Her face
and little legs were very black against the white.’ Steinbeck also described a
scene which would possibly give adults nightmares much less a six year old
child: ’The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks
went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did not look at the howling
crowd, but from the side the whites of her eyes showed like those of a
frightened fawn. The men turned her around like a doll and then the strange
procession moved up the broad walk toward the school, and the child was even
more a mite because the men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I
think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had not gone ten steps
without skipping, but now in the middle of her first step, the weight bore her
down and her little round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall
guards. Slowly they climbed the steps and entered the school.’ Steinbeck’s
descriptive essay is said to have inspired the now famous 1964 Norman Rockwell
painting, "The Problem We All Live With."
In 2015 schools in the USA are open to students of all races and this is because
of the courage of African Americans who risked their lives and their children’s
lives. It was just 3 years before, in September 1957 that a group (Little Rock
Nine) of mostly 14 year olds risked their lives to integrate Central High School
in Little Rock, Arkansas. Today it is hardly likely that African Americans would