In early 1960, Bridges was one of six black children in New Orleans to pass the test that determined whether they could go to the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. Under significant pressure from the federal government, the Orleans Parish School Board administered an entrance exam to students at Bridges' school with the intention of keeping black children out of white schools.īridges attended a segregated kindergarten in 1959. In 1957, federal troops were ordered to Little Rock, Arkansas, to escort the Little Rock Nine students in combating violence that occurred as a result of the decision. Many white people did not want schools to be integrated and, though it was a federal ruling, state governments were not doing their part in enforcing the new laws. Board of Education decision was finalized in 1954, southern states were extremely resistant to the decision that they must integrate within six years. The court ruling declared that the establishment of separate public schools for white children, which black children were barred from attending, was unconstitutional accordingly, black students were permitted to attend such schools. Board of Education was decided three months and twenty-two days before Bridges' birth. Backgroundīridges was born during the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1960, when she was six years old, her parents responded to a request from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and volunteered her to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system, even though her father was hesitant. When she was four years old, the family relocated from Tylertown, Mississippi, where Bridges was born, to New Orleans, Louisiana. As a child, she spent much time taking care of her younger siblings, though she also enjoyed playing jump rope and softball and climbing trees. She is the subject of a 1964 painting, The Problem We All Live With, by Norman Rockwell.īridges was the eldest of five children born to Abon and Lucille Bridges. 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.
Ruby Nell Bridges Hall (born September 8, 1954) is an American civil rights activist.
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