Consider This from NPR - The Civil Rights Activist Sharing Her Story With A New Generation

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

Ruby Bridges was just six years old in 1960 when she became the first Black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans. She was escorted by four federal marshals and greeted by a mob of angry white protesters. Today, Bridges is a civil rights activist and author, and she is sharing her experience with a new generation of kids in her latest children's book, I Am Ruby Bridges. Bridges tells her story through the eyes of her six-year-old self and talks about what today's children can learn from her experience.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail]. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. The morning of November 14th, 1960, a little girl named Ruby Bridges became the first Black child to desegregate the all-white William France Elementary School in New Orleans. Ruby was six, and as she got dressed and left for school that day, she didn't know she was making history. I had no idea that it was going to be a white school. It wasn't something that my parents explained to me. As a matter of fact, the only thing they said is, Ruby, you're going to go to a new school today and you'd better behave. Four federal marshals had to drive her. An angry white mob greeted her at the school. Living in New Orleans, I was accustomed to Mighty Bra.

And that's exactly what it looked like to me. White people, Black people all lined up together and, you know, shouting and waving their hands and throwing things. The mob rushed inside the building behind Bridges. She was escorted to the principal's office, where she sat the whole day with her mother, waiting to be assigned to a classroom. That did not happen because every one of those parents rushed in behind me, went into every classroom, and they pulled out every child. I watched them parade right past me out of the school building. So by the time I got there on the second day, the school was totally empty. Totally empty, except for her teacher, Barbara Henry, who had come from Boston to New Orleans to teach what she anticipated to be an entire first-grade class. Instead, she and Ruby were alone in the classroom the whole school year.

She had this wonderful smile that today is always what I think of when I think of her. She was beautifully dressed, carrying her little lunch bag, and I taking her from the hands of the federal marshals and taking her by the hand and leading her upstairs to the classroom where we began the day by ourselves. I think one of the strongest impressions that remain is the contrast between the anger outside and the quiet and the peace inside. Henry told NPR in 1995 that because of that hostile scene outside of the school, she tried to make the school day as normal as it could be. We concentrated more on learning.

We did a major concentration on language arts and reading and little mathematics and handwriting, all those things that are typical of a first-grader's curriculum. And I would do little music with songs with her. And we would do our own little physical exercise program ourselves. And then I would leave for a short time, perhaps 20 minutes or so, around noontime, which time Ruby really was alone. Consider this.

More than 60 years after sitting in an empty classroom, Ruby Bridges is sharing her story with a new generation. The civil rights activist is the author of the children's book, I Am Ruby Bridges. Coming up, we'll talk to her about her experience and how it resonates today. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Monday, September 26th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today, or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Four years after Ruby Bridges' first day at William Franz School,

the scene found its way into American homes through a Norman Rockwell painting. It was called The Problem We All Live With, and it showed Bridges, a little girl in a starched white dress carrying notebooks and ruler, surrounded by four U.S. Marshals walking past a wall etched with the N-word and the letters KKK. Years later, speaking at the Norman Rockwell Museum, Bridges said the painting set her on a path of activism. Once I saw that painting, I realized that there was something much bigger than myself that I needed to pursue and be involved in. So I think that that sort of put me on my quest to tell my story and to work with kids. The artist Nicholas Smith knows the painting well. It was on the wall of his house growing up. Smith calls himself an artivist, an artist, and an activist.

In his art, he celebrates and mourns Black lives, sports, music, and civil rights icons, as well as victims of police brutality. People have told me they feel like my art is a superpower because it helps people grieve. It helps people process and deal with topics that they may be heavy and it might put a smile on their face. It might make them laugh or it might make them cry. Smith teamed up with Ruby Bridges on her new children's book. Through his semi-abstract brushstrokes,

scenes of the school and Bridges' family swirl and sweep around the six-year-old, her face full of wonder as she takes everything in. Bridges says that Smith captured the hope she felt on that first day of school, as well as bringing her sense of humor to life on the page. Nicholas is an incredible artist, and he and I started to really talk about what that was like for me. And the next time he presented the layout, it was perfect. Ruby Bridges wanted to tell the story from her own six-year-old eyes, so it would resonate with six-year-olds today.

I asked her to read an excerpt for me. Second day, when I arrived at my classroom, my new teacher opens the door and greets me. Hi, I'm Mrs. Henry, your teacher. Come in and take a seat, she says. And aren't I surprised, because she is also white. I never had a white teacher before. The biggest surprise of all, I am the only kid in the class. I didn't see any other kids at all. Not one. That test must have been a lot harder than I thought. Why am I the only kid in my class? Not to mention the only kid in the whole school. And why don't I see anyone who looks like me? And then that's when it hit me. Did it get better? Did other kids eventually show up? You know, I think part of the story that lots of people are not aware of is that there were

some white parents who actually tried to cross that same picket line, that same mile, during that year to bring their kids to school with me. But it was only a handful, maybe five, six kids. And the principal would take them and she would hide them so that they would never see me and I would never see them. I remember hearing voices, but I never saw kids. And it kept me wondering where the voices were coming from. If they were real at all. What I did not know is that every time I would mention it to Mrs. Henry, she was going to the principal and advocating for me. She was saying, you know, the laws changed and kids can be together now, but you're hiding them from room B. If you don't allow them

to come together, I'm going to report you to the superintendent. And that forced them to allow Mrs. Henry to take me to where they were being hidden. And that was near the end of the year. Near the end of the year. I'm thinking I just introduced you as the first African-American student to integrate an elementary school in the South. And it sounds like integrate was way too strong a word for what was happening at that school for most of that school year. Yes. You know, that was always something that bothered me. I was the only kid and it stayed that way until the end of the year. And Mrs. Henry took me to this other classroom and opened the door and lo and behold, there they were, four or five kids sitting there playing. And I was so excited.

It didn't matter to me what they looked like. I just wanted someone my own age to play with. So I was excited to find them finally. But I have to say that that was the day that I realized that everything was about me and the color of my skin, because a little boy said, I can't play with you. My mom said not to play with you. And he called me the N word. And that's when I had my aha moment that the reason why there were no kids here was because of me and the color of my skin. He actually made it make sense. I did not realize what was going on around me until he told me. And that, my first encounter with racism, he introduced it to me. Did you ever get the chance to talk with your parents, maybe in the years that followed, about why they wanted you to do this?

You know, not really. I mean, it was a very hard time for them. They were very young. You know, I am the oldest of eight and, you know, they were consumed with where the next meal was going to come from for us. And my father was really more against me going to the school and it was because you know he had fought in the Korean war and he said even on the battlefield you could be in the same foxhole with a white soldier you know you had each other's backs at that point but if you lived at the end of the day you couldn't go back to the same barracks and you couldn't eat in the same mess hall. So he felt like, you know, why subject his child to what might happen? So he really was against it. It was my mother that convinced him.

And I think at the end of the day, it caused a lot of tension between the two. Eventually, they separated by the time I was in sixth grade, and I was then being raised by a single parent. So to answer your question, no, we never really discussed it. You're only in your 60s now. What happened to you that first day of school was so recent in the grand scheme of things. And it occurs to me that the kids reading this today, many, most of them will take it for granted that black and white kids go to school together. This is totally normal. Like, how else would it be? They've never known anything else. How did you think about writing to kids for whom this must feel like ancient history in a way,

and yet it so clearly isn't? What I've found in the past 25 years visiting schools and talking to kids and working with them, I think that they relate to the loneliness. They relate to someone not wanting to play with you for no real good reason, not giving you a chance. And so kids, it resonates with them. They don't quite understand why someone would do that, why someone would treat another person like that. And I think that they feel like, why don't we give each other a chance, try to get to know each other, that everyone at that age wants a friend to play with. And I think that that's part of what they resonate with. The fact that it's also explaining a time in history when we couldn't be together, you know, it touches on something that I truly

want them to understand. Racism just does not make any sense. And they get that. And, you know, once this book is closed, and I know that they've gotten that, then I feel like part of my work is done. Author and activist Ruby Bridges on her new children's book, I Am Ruby Bridges. Mendeleet Delbarco contributed reporting at the top of this episode. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, Thank you.