AkaSci 🛰️
64 years ago on this day in 1960, 6-year old Ruby Bridges walked into the William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, escorted by 4 federal marshals and made history by becoming the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.
Her courage and poise paved the way for the fight for Civil Rights and Justice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges
#RubyBridges #segregation #integration #CivilRights #USpolitics #USHistory
1/n
AkaSci 🛰️
There were protests, boycotts, threats and chaos at the school. After a few days, white parents began bringing their children to school. Ruby Bridges remained the only child in her class, as she would until the following year.
Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her, while another held up a black baby doll in a coffin; because of this, the U.S. Marshals allowed Bridges to eat only the food that she brought from home.
AkaSci 🛰️
"The Problem We All Live With" is the title of this iconic painting by Norman Rockwell from 1964. On the wall behind Ruby Bridges are the words "nigger", the letters "KKK" and a smashed and splattered tomato.
It is a terrifying image, yet one that depicts young black Ruby as a pillar of strength, poised, unafraid, unperturbed, books and ruler in hand, walking into the future. A sight that must have been terrifying for many of the white racists at that time.
AkaSci 🛰️
In the following days, whenever Ruby Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers except for one refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Bridges and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, "as if she were teaching a whole class."
https://jtojhumanrights.org.uk/ruby-bridges-barbara-henry/
Credit: AP/Shutterstock
2/n
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.