A Little Child Shall Lead Them: She Persisted: Ruby Bridges by Kekla Magoon

Little Ruby Bridges was a farm-to-city girl. As a preschooler, she played and helped pick and prepare the food the family grew. But her parents knew she was bright and needed to go to school, so they moved from the farm to New Orleans, and Ruby had a happy year in the Kindergarten class at Lockett Elementary School Kindergarten, which was all black children as the laws of Louisiana required.

But in 1954 the Supreme Court of the U.S. ruled that all public schools must be integrated.

That summer all black children were required to take a scholastic test:

The test was very hard, on purpose. The white people who designed the test to be so hard that none of the black children would pass.

But Ruby Bridges scored very high, one of only four black children who passed the test, and she was assigned to begin first grade at William Franz Elementary School. But although the school was only a short walk from her house, it had been an all-white school and parents and non-parents were very angry. On the first day, crowds of them surrounded the school, with weapons and signs demanding that the school not be integrated--ever. For her safety, Ruby had to be driven by Federal Marshalls to the school and escorted inside and all the way to her classroom--where she found herself the only student of her teacher, Mrs. Henry.

"I was going to integrate William Frantz Public School and I was going to be alone," she wrote later.

At that moment Ruby was not afraid. She was only sad that she could not be with her friends any more. At six years old she had no idea what a huge moment in history she was about to be part of.

Almost all adults and some children are familiar with the Norman Rockwell painting of little Ruby, in her little white dress, with white socks and shoes, and beribboned braids, surrounded by protective federal marshals as an angry crowd screamed and tossed ripe tomatoes at her. But Ruby Bridges bravely walked into a new world, inside to a now integrated William Frantz School. That painting, which now hangs outside the Oval Office in the White House, is an iconic symbol of the courage and determination of those brave souls who eventually overcame school segregation.

Coretta Scott King award-winning author Kekla Magoon tells the essence of the story of Ruby Bridges in language accessible for young readers in a short chapter book, describing how the six-year-old felt during that very unusual first-grade year--how Ruby sometimes hid her sandwich, hoping to get to go to the lunchroom with the other first graders and how Mrs. Henry stopped lunching with other teachers so that Ruby would not be lonely eating alone in their classroom.

Illustrated by Gillian Flint, She Persisted: Ruby Bridges (Philomel Books, 2021) is one of the books about persistent girls and women in the series She Persisted.

Beginning Black History Month with what the children know best, the schoolroom, this is a perfect read-aloud to begin February observances and activities. "A context-offering complement to Bridges’ own books for children." says Kirkus Reviews.

First Steps: This Is Your Time by Ruby Bridges

In 1969, my life was changed forever..... I was chosen to be the first black child to go to an all-white school in my hometown, New Orleans.

I didn't yet know that I had stepped into history.

In her beautifully pressed plaid school dress, big hairbow, spotless white socks, and black patent-leather Mary Jane shoes, six-year-old Ruby Bridges was escorted by Federal marshalls to the school where she was to start first grade in 1960, surrounded by screaming women holding babies, teen agers, and men waving signs saying STATE'S RIGHTS. Black-and-white newpapers of that time showed the solemn little girl, still looking forward to making new friends on her first day, as she made that walk into William Frantz Elementary. What waited for her was a classroom empty of other first graders, but a teacher, Barbara Henry, who was her teacher, and in Bridges' words....,

"I FELT LOVED. SHE BECAME MY BEST FRIEND."

In the years after the Supreme Court's Brown V. Board of Education decision in 1954, public school desegregation was marked by mob violence, bombings, and endless court cases, but in the wake of that unrest in 1964, the American public had an experience that shook them to their hearts: popular artist Norman Rockwell's portrait of little Ruby on her way to school on the cover of LOOK magazine brought the politics of school integration home in the public mind. Rockwell took some artistic license in Ruby's little white dress as a counterfoil to the blood-red tomato splattered on the wall she had just walked by. The ugliness of race hatred was shown in the personal experience of one young child, and minds were changed by that iconic image.

Ruby Bridges was and is a witness of the early days of school desegregation and as an adult woman tells her own story in This Is Your Time (Delacorte Press, 2020), dedicated to Congressman John Lewis, honestly reporting that epic first day and first year of her public schooling as seen through a young child's eyes and how it changed her life, with a moving statement of hope for our mutual futures. She writes...

"IT IS LOVE AND GRACE THAT WILL ALLOW US TO SEE AND RESPECT THE MANY WAYS THAT GOD HAS MADE US UNIQUE...."

Says School Library Journal, “Timely, powerful, and full of hope. This missive of truth, spoken by a true American hero, deserves a place in all libraries.”