Ruby Bridges is 68 — and racial integration in US schools is just 62

The year 1954 was symbolic for blacks in the United States of America (USA). It is the year when ‘Brown Vs. Board of Education,’ a landmark judgement was passed in the supreme court of the USA; a ruling to cease ‘desegregation’ in the US schools dominated mainly by whites. Consequently, in November 1960, the six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the very first black child who cleared the examination to study in an all-white elementary school in Louisiana. Today is June 26; Bridges is now 68 years old and it has been 62 years since her first day in school.

She told the UK-based, The Guardian, “I was really not aware that I was going into a white school. My parents never explained it to me. I stumbled into crowds of people, and living here in New Orleans, being accustomed to Mardi Gras, the huge celebration that takes place in the city every year, I really thought that’s what it was that day. There was no need for me to be afraid of that.”

Even at an early age, when she started going to school. She had to face discrimination at her school—the parents complained to the teachers that Bridges did not deserve equal treatment with the whites. Parents let their children away from Bridges. People threw objects at her to show their resentment outside the school, whereas police had to use barricades to prevent violence. 

Her parents had to pay a high price for sending her to an all-white school. According to the Guardian, her mother was a domestic worker, and her father was a service station attendant; both of them had been fired from their jobs. Life at school was callous; she needed federal protection because the protesters waited for her outside the school.

People yelled at her and threw racist slurs; on a poster, it was written, “All I want for Christmas is a clean white school.” Even a held-up miniature coffin, inside the coffin, was a black doll in it. Although, it became a defining picture of the civil rights movement in the US. Later, popularised by Norman Rockwell in his painting, ‘The Problem We All Live With’.

She recalled that her first introduction to racism happened in school, a social boycott of her existence when a fellow student told her that she was a “nigger” and he could not speak to her. The realisation of this racism was “awakening” to her.

A mere 62 years have passed since the landmark judgement came into existence. Bridges is now 68, and became an ideal and a voice of conscience for people worldwide who fought against racial injustice and white supremacism in America.