Ruby Bridges

Early years

Sep 8, 1954

Ruby Bridges was born on September 8th, 1954 in Tylertown Mississippi. Ruby was the oldest of five children to parents Lucille and Abon Bridges. At the tender age of two, her parents decided to move to Lousiana for a better work opportunity.

Exam to School

1959

The government passed a law that schools had a six-year span to desegregate schools. However, southern states were still pretty resistant to blacks and whites being in the same schools. The school district decided to have children take an exam in order to be accepted into any of there schools. Ruby and five other children passed the exam to get into the all-white William Frantz Elementary School.

Undecided

1959

Rubys father was unsure about her attending this school because of safety reasons but her mother on the other hand thought this would be a great opportunity for her daughter. Rub's parents were denied an education because of the color of their skin and her mother wanted her daughter to succeed academically.

Start of Kindergarten

Nov 4, 1960

Once Ruby started school she and her mother had to be escorted by federal United States marshalls into the school. Crowds gathered outside the school protesting against Ruby attending the school. Students in her first-grade class parents had pulled them out of school and even her teacher resigned. She refused to teach a black student. Barba Henry an educator stepped up and taught Bridges. She was in a one-person class that whole school year.

Family Suffers

1962

Rubies family suffered also for her stand at attending this school. Her father lost his job, grocery stores refusing to sell to her mother, and her grandparents were evicted from their farm. The struggles that Bridges had to face lead her parents to divorce when she was 12.

In Need of Therapy

1964

Ruby needed some well-desrvered counseling sessions with what had happened in her short span of life. Psychologist Robert Coles wanted to take Ruby in because he admired her courage. Coles included her in a study of Black children who had desegregated public schools.

Adult Life

1990

Ruby Bridges, later on, graduated from a desegrated high school. She became a travel agent, married Malcolm Hall, and had four children. Ruby then founded the Ruby Bridges Foundation which was to encourage people of different shades and backgrounds to respect one another.

Author

1999

Ruby decided it was time to turn her life experiences into novels. Her first book " The Story of Ruby Bridges" was a Biography about her life during the time in the 1960s with attending kindergarten, high school, and life after that. In 1999 is when Ruby wrote, "Through My Eyes" going into depth about her experience at William Frantz the elementary school.

Awards and Achievements

2020

Ruby received the Presidental Citizens medal in 2001, wrote a memoir in 2009 titled "I Am Ruby Bridges". In 2011 Ruby visited the White House to speak with the first black president Barack Obama. To this day Bridges still does speaking engagements, she spoke to students in 2018 and in 2020 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln during Martin Luther King Jr. week.