Through My Eyes

“My father’s parents were sharecroppers who worked the land under the broiling Mississippi sun. Sharecroppers didn’t own the land they farmed. They paid rent to the landowner in whatever crops they raised and struggled to survive on what was left.”

This family background is important because it was common for Southern Black families in the early-20th century. Sharecropping in many places replaced plantation slavery after the Civil War and persisted for a century. Formerly enslaved African Americans knew how to grow and harvest crops and could not easily access education or training for new jobs, nor could they buy land (they had not collected wages), so they were commonly forced into sharecropping that provided land but required farmers to share their crop yield with a landowner in order to pay rent. In effect, sharecropping set up a system of debt peonage. The rent payments constituted most of the crop yield on many farms. As Bridges notes here, it was a struggle to feed and support a family that relied on sharecropping.

“My family moved to the old seaport city of New Orleans in 1958, when I was four. On the block where I lived, everyone was black. White families lived on the next block, but at the time, it seemed as if they were a world apart. A lot of the black people, like my parents, had left farms in Louisiana or Mississippi to make a better living in the city.”

This quote continues introducing the Bridges family history. The Bridges moved to a Black neighborhood in New Orleans and even though white families lived in proximity, the segregated neighborhoods constituted different worlds to the residents who lived there. William Frantz Public School was very close to where the Bridges lived, but until it was integrated, Ruby and the other children on her block walked together to a Black school much further away. This reveals how segregation was deeply engrained in the city.

“My parents argued about what to do. My father, Abon, didn’t want any part of school integration. He was a gentle man and feared that angry segregationists might hurt his family. Having fought in the Korean War, he experienced segregation on the battlefield, where he risked his life for his country. He didn’t think that things would ever change. He didn’t think I would ever be treated as an equal.”

Not all African American families favored segregation. Even though distance from white people meant less access to the best goods, services, and spaces, it also might have provided some protection for Black families who would be targets of threats and violence by angry racists if they came into proximity or started to share space with white people. These were not unfounded fears. As Bridges notes here, segregation in the Armed Forces shaped her father’s perspective of the future of race relations. He thought violence against his family was much more likely than achieving equality. He had risked his life for a country that refused to grant him equal access to the privileges of American citizenship, even in war.

“The Louisiana governor, Jimmie H. Davis, supported the segregationists. He said he would go to jail before he would allow black children in white schools. He even threatened to close all of the public schools rather than see them integrated.”

Racism was deeply entrenched in the American political system and anti-Black politicians openly voiced their prejudice. In the 1960s, it was not yet politically unpopular to be explicitly racist. This quote reveals the centrality of the issue of school segregation in the larger context of civil rights. White parents did not want their children to attend school with Black classmates and they mobilized to prevent integration. They had support from local and state government officials, who continually tried to appeal to the federal government and block integration efforts. This was not a movement that local communities accepted without controversy or violence.

“All I remember thinking that night was that I wouldn’t be going to school with my friends anymore, and I wasn’t happy about that.”

This quote summarizes Bridges’s recollection of the night before her first day at William Frantz Public School. She had no understanding of what she was going to face or why she had been tasked with such a difficult demand. To her, what was most significant was that she had friends who attended her previous school, and she did not know anyone at the new school. Though this is a predictable childhood response to impending change, her fears were valid as she spent a lonely and nearly peerless year at William Frantz

“Many of the boys carried signs and said awful things, but most of all I remember seeing a black doll in a coffin, which frightened me more than anything else.”

Aggressive white segregationists did not just target the decision-making adults leading integration efforts. They directly threatened Bridges herself. Children were even among the protestors, brought by their parents and fed racist propaganda so they would grow up opposing integration. The Black baby doll in the coffin proves that threats of violence targeted children directly. The disturbing image had the intended impact on Bridges: It scared her.

“I spent the whole first day with Mrs. Henry in the classroom. I wasn’t allowed to have lunch in the cafeteria or go outside for recess, so we just stayed in our room. The marshals sat outside. If I had to go to the bathroom, the marshals walked me down the hall.”

This general experience characterized most of Bridges’s school year at William Frantz. She eventually got to occasionally go outside or briefly see white classmates, but most of her time was spent alone with just her teacher, removed from other white people in the school building. The marshals were there for her safety, but in truth, school personnel in the building wanted to avoid Bridges. Bridges’s attendance represented official integration at the school, but classrooms remained segregated.

“He especially wanted to see a group of women who came to scream at me and at the few white children who crossed the picket lines and went to school.”

The “he” in this quotation is author John Steinbeck, who traveled through New Orleans during the early school integration process there. Steinbeck wrote about Bridges, stressing her youth and smallness, but this quote indicates that he was particularly interested in the various reactions to desegregation among the city’s white residents. Opinions about integration were not strictly drawn by lines of race. The white protestors taunted and threatened both Bridges and the white families who kept their children in school.

“Very quickly, the chorus of racists became obsessed with the Foremans. They taunted them without mercy.”

This quotation demonstrates that there was not a united white front against integration in New Orleans and that violence targeted both Black people and their non-Black allies. The Foremans were a family who kept their first-grade daughter enrolled in William Frantz while most other white families boycotted the school. Racist white segregationists saw support for integration as a betrayal. Segregationists’ loyalty was not simply to all other white people; it was to white people who shared the same worldview.

“While I was attending William Frantz, a couple of miles away, three black girls were integrating McDonogh No. 19. Their names were Leona, Tessie, and Gail.”

Ruby Bridges became so famous partly because she was the lone Black first-grader at her school and had to endure the terrifying walk through the school’s entrance without any peers. The contrast of the single, small Black girl in a dress and the tall, white federal marshals in suits captured people’s attention and won their sympathies well beyond Louisiana. Though she was alone at William Frantz, Bridges was one of four first graders—all girls—to integrate the New Orleans public elementary school system in 1960. The full names of the other girls mentioned in this passage are Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne. They are sometimes known as the “McDonogh Three.”

“White people drove through the city at night, leaving burning crosses as warnings in black neighborhoods. African Americans knew this was meant to frighten them into giving up integration.”

White segregationists tried to intimidate Black people to try to force them to stop exercising their rights and fighting for justice. This tactic had been used before, for example following Reconstruction, when an earlier iteration of the KKK used threats and intimidation to try to prevent Black people from voting in political elections. It is important to understand that threats are violent, even if no one suffers direct physical harm from threatening words and images. Burning crosses, closely associated with Klan rallies and lynchings, represented real violence and functioned as psychological torture.

“My grandparents telephoned from Mississippi to say they were afraid for us. They thought my father would be lynched—murdered by a lawless mob.”

The fears expressed in this passage were not unfounded. Thousands of Black men became the targets of mob violence in the late-19th and early-20th centuries (the NAACP records the number at over 4,700 between 1882 and 1968). White vigilantes murdered Black men under the delusion that those men were a danger to white society. Mr. Bridges’s willingness to keep his daughter enrolled at William Frantz made him a target for white people willing to resort to murder to uphold white supremacy.

“I will always remember how our neighbors on France Street helped us through the winter. They came by all the time to see how we were doing. They were nervous about the racial tension in the city, but they also wanted to support us. At night, they watched the house to make sure no one was prowling around.”

The federal government sent marshals to help protect Ruby Bridges at school, but the most regular support and protection came from her immediate community—her Black friends and neighbors who understood the importance of the family’s struggle and who risked their own safety to support the larger cause of integration and the Bridges family itself. Neighbors offered help in a lot of different ways, including childcare, emotional encouragement, and financial assistance.

“In December the crowd that gathered in front of the school was smaller than before. The people who came were angry, loud militants, but the numbers were down.”

This observation has important implications. As it became clear that integration was going to proceed, some segregationists stopped bothering to openly challenge it. That shift did not mean that those people changed their opinions about segregation or African Americans by and large, but the aggressive challenge to civil rights progress dwindled. As the crowd of protestors shrank, more white children returned to school. The progress, however, was slim at first. As Bridges notes in this passage, there were still people angry enough to keep protesting even as it became less popular.

“Being Mrs. Henry’s only student wasn’t a chore. It was fun and felt sort of special. She was more like my best friend than just an ordinary teacher. She was a loving person, and I knew she cared about me.”

Mrs. Henry was an extremely important figure in Bridges’s life during first grade. Because they had a positive and trusting relationship, the classroom they shared felt like a safe space to Bridges, even if it was lonely. There were very few other allies at William Frantz for Bridges to meet and trust. The reader by this point in the book knows what a burden integration was for Bridges. The fact that she recalled such a significant component of her school year in such a positive way reveals the great resilience she had as a child.

“When I went to the teachers’ lounge at lunchtime, the other teachers at first ignored me or made unpleasant remarks about the fact that I was willing to teach a black child.”

This quote is from Mrs. Barbara Henry, Ruby Bridges’s first grade teacher at William Frantz Public School. Henry was ostracized in her workplace due to her origin, her accent, and her active participation in integration. Henry’s details from the school demonstrates the widespread racism of the time and the explicit racism the school itself still maintained, even after being designated the site of an integration. Henry illustrates that the racism of the 1960s was explicitly systemic, from classroom teachers to white housewives and their children. The racism reached from Black people to white allies and those thought to be encouraging or supporting integration.

“Kneeling at the side of my bed and talking to the Lord made everything okay. My mother and our pastor always said you have to pray for your enemies and people who do you wrong, and that’s what I did.”

Bridges mentions at several points in the book how important her Christian religion was in her upbringing and how much it fueled her strength to endure the many challenges of her life. It also inspired Bridges to not feel hatred, even though she faced the hatred of others––often others who proudly identified as Christians themselves. The passage also reveals how obedient Bridges was in her youth. She says later that part of what made her endure her first-grade year was the fact that she had been told to by her mother.

“Compared to my family, the Smiths were wealthy, and I was amazed when I saw their color television and the piano that her son gave me lessons on. The whole family was very kind to me. Those were wonderful weekends, but they left me a little dizzy and unsure about who I was and where I belonged. But now it’s clear to me that those visits showed me a better side of life and made me feel that I had to do better for myself.”

Mrs. Smith was a member of the NAACP, and her husband was Ruby’s pediatrician. Mrs. Smith took Bridges around the city to different attractions and invited her into the Smiths’s home on weekends. Bridges articulates here that the great discrepancy in the wealthier world of the Smiths and her own world of discrimination and financial struggle were hard to reconcile in her young mind. Bridges was inspired by the increased material quality of this other life she glimpsed and wanted the same comforts for her own family.

“At that moment, it all made sense to me. I finally realized that everything had happened because I was black. I remember feeling a little stunned. It was all about the color of my skin. I wasn’t angry at the boy because I understood. His mother had told him not to play with me, and he was obeying her. I would have done the same thing. If my mama said not to do something, I didn’t do it.”

In this passage, Bridges recalls the first moment she came to understand racism. Towards the end of first grade, she had an interaction with a white classmate who said he was forbidden by his mother to play with a Black child. Bridges’s reflection reveals both the maturation of her childhood perspective and the fact that white children with segregationist parents were indoctrinated by their parents’ racism. The young boy seemed to have no personal issue with Bridges; he had simply been forbidden to play with her.

“From second grade on, I felt different from the other kids in my class, and it wasn’t just because of my accent. William Frantz School was integrated, but the long, strange journey had changed me forever.”

Second grade was very different than first grade had been for Bridges. She did not anticipate a total transformation of her daily routine. She had a new teacher, a new classroom, and Black and white classmates. She still felt isolated, however, because no one besides Mrs. Henry (who was gone) had any sense of what the previous year had been like for Bridges. The accent to which she refers is a Northern-influenced accent she picked up from Mrs. Henry because the two spent so much time together. As she indicates at the end of this quotation, the hardship of the previous year changed Bridges. She faced racism directly as a young child and had few allies at school to help her through the lonely year during which so many people treated her like a pariah. No one else at the school could relate to that formative experience.

“How did I get through 1960 and the long year of integration? I think it was a combination of things. For one, I really believed as a child that praying could get me through anything. I still believe that. Also, because of my mother’s strict discipline, which was the way many children were raised then, I knew I was expected to obey. Getting through first grade was partly just a matter of obeying my parents. As the oldest child, I was also used to being ‘responsible’ and looking out for my brothers and sister. The responsibility that was placed on my shoulders in first grade may have felt familiar to me, even if it was heavy.”

Bridges offers this honest reflection in the last chapter in the book. Bridges never claims that she understood the great importance of her actions in 1960 when she was only six years old. She expressly did not understand the larger picture, but she was an obedient child who found strength in prayer. She had to develop her maturity early in the face of the racism towards her and had already grown up through experiencing a considerable amount of hard work and responsibility. Bridges does not suggest that her background made first grade easy. It was a remarkably difficult period in her life.

“For fifteen years, I thoroughly enjoyed working as a travel agent. It allowed me the opportunity to see parts of the world I had only dreamed about.”

Bridges’s high school education allowed her to pursue a professional career as a travel agent, which she enjoyed for many years. This detail is important because it highlights the fact that integration was supposed to accomplish better education for Black children who might not have access to enjoyable, middle-class jobs with subpar education throughout their young lives. Bridges did return to activism later in her life, but she did not and does not exist only within that context. She worked in travel and traveled herself.

“In my adult years, I began to feel that my life should have a greater purpose. In the early 1990s, my youngest brother, Milton, was killed in a drug-related shooting in the housing project where he still lived. I was very shaken by this, as was the rest of my family. However, my brother’s death woke me up in a way. It made me take a long look at my life. I slowly began to realize that what I had done in 1960 was meaningful and important. It allowed me an opportunity to speak to people and to help kids who were in trouble, the way Milton had been in trouble. Little by little, my life took on a new meaning. It’s odd how misfortune can bring on new blessings.”

The death of her younger brother Milton was a transformative moment in Bridges’s life. As she explains here, it motivated her to use her platform to address some of the issues disproportionately facing Black communities—particularly the one in which she grew up—and create resources for helping young kids to access fulfilling and educational experiences. The fact that she might be able to build up and utilize such a platform, however, was a revelation in Bridges’s adulthood. It took many years of processing for her to understand the larger context that she helped to shape when she was six, or even to realize how far and wide her story had spread and how much it had inspired people. She was able to capitalize on her recognition and garner support for the ongoing struggle for full civil rights and equal opportunity.