Ruby Bridges escorted by U.S. Marshals to attend an all-white school, 1960. 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.
At the tender age of six years old Rub Bridges is one of the youngest and most important members of the civil rights movement. In November 1960 she became the first black student to integrate in an elementary school in the South. In order to attend classes she had to be escorted by federal marshals due to threats against her safety.
William Frantz Elementary School was only a few blocks away from her New Orleans home so it made perfect sense that she would go there and receive the educational opportunities as her white peers.
After passing an entrance exam Bridges was allowed into the school, but she had to be escorted past crowds of vicious racists every day. She spent her first year in the school as a class of one because so many white parents removed threatened to remove their students from school if she attended along side them.
Over a decade later she graduated from a desegregated high school and in 1999 she established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education.
