Ruby Bridges

Ruby Bridges

Ruby Nell Bridges Hall is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960. She has been awarded the National Civil Rights Medal for her role in the integration of New Orleans schools in the 1950s and 1960s.

About Ruby Bridges in brief

Summary Ruby BridgesRuby Nell Bridges Hall is an American civil rights activist. She was the first African-American child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, 1960. She is the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell. Bridges’ father was initially reluctant, but her mother felt strongly that the move was needed not only to give her own daughter a better education, but to \”take this step forward  for all African- American children\”. Her mother finally convinced her father to let her go to the school. Bridges remained the only child in her class, as she would until the following year, when she was transferred to McDonogh No. 19 and became known as the Mc donogh Three. She has been awarded the National Civil Rights Medal for her role in the integration of New Orleans schools in the 1950s and 1960s. She also received the Congressional Gold Medal in the 1960s for her contributions to the civil rights movement.

Her husband, a former U.S. deputy marshal, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Her daughter, Pam Foreman, walked through the angry mob, saying, “I simply want the privilege of taking my child through the school’s doors,” when a five-year-old white student broke the school boycott and entered the school when a white minister, Lloyd Anderson Fore, walked his daughter through the doors. Her mother, Lucille Bridges, said, ‘She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all very very proud of her.’ She is survived by her husband, Abon Bridges, and their five children, all of whom are still alive today. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana with her husband and three children.