A Civil Rights Icon Says

Racism Is A ‘Grown-Up Disease’

By Larissa Lytwyn

Led by federal marshals to the door of a previously all-white school each weekday morning of 1960, then-first grade student Ruby Bridges had to weave through crowds of hate.

Her beloved teacher Barbara Henry noticed that her lips moved as she walked.

“What are you saying to them?” Ms Henry asked, voice taut with concern.

Ruby replied that she was not talking to them, but praying for them.

Speaking recently with Newtown High School students, Ms Bridges has retained this markedly peaceful countenance, nurtured, she says, through her steadfast faith in God and the good of humankind.

Immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” Ms Bridges, a Louisiana native, was one of only six girls who passed a daylong test administered to 100 black children whose families, encouraged by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), wanted to enroll them at white schools.

Then-Louisiana Governor Jimmie H. Davis was strongly against the Supreme Court desegregation order enforced by then-President John F. Kennedy, Ms Bridges said.

The reaction from some whites was so fierce on that first day of school at William Frantz Elementary, Ms Bridges recalled, that two girls dropped out by the end of the afternoon.

This reaction, largely consisting of vicious epithets, also included a “mascot”: a child-sized coffin with a dark-skinned doll placed inside.

Within this daily onslaught, Ms Bridges said she found solace in the guidance of Ms Henry, whom she reunited with in 1995 on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

“We’ve since kept in close touch,” Ms Bridges said, who detailed her odyssey through a slide show that included pictures of Ms Henry as well as many scenes from her first year at William Frantz.

Showing a picture of her classmates, Ms Bridges mentioned how one child was not allowed to be in the same picture with a black child.

Another picture showed Ms Bridges standing, reunited, with two federal marshals who had walked her to school, a print of “The Problem We All Live With,” held between them.

After her brother died in 1993, Ms Bridges looked after his daughters, who attended William Frantz.

Ms Bridges began volunteering at the school three times a week. Later that year, child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who had helped oversee her daily escort to school, wrote The Story of Ruby Bridges, an account of the civil rights icon aimed at children.

The book’s publishing pushed Ms Bridges back into the public eye. Today she speaks with classrooms across the nation, in both urban and suburban classrooms.

At the end of each presentation, she asks students if there are any racism issues in their school today; oftentimes, though subtly veiled, it is.

While Newtown High School is predominantly white, one student talked about the importance of money to students.

“It’s all about whether you have it, or if you don’t, or where you live,” he said.

“This is something you will find to be true all your life,” Ms Bridges replied, sadly.

Newtown High School senior Ed Wolf talked about growing up in the ethnically diverse Bronx. “People are going to be shell-shocked when they go to college and see how different everything is,” he said.

Another student discussed the discrimination that could happen because of pressure to be popular. Less popular students, she said, are oftentimes dismissed or looked down on because of their “lower” status.

“Discrimination is all around us,” Ms Bridges said.

She mentioned how younger students usually have more questions. “The older you get, the more ingrained certain beliefs become,” she said.

Her website, www.rubybridges.org, refers to racism as a “grown-up disease.”

Schools, she said, are a place where people can come together. “We are more similar than we are different,” she said.

Newtown High School Principal William Manfredonia thanked Ms Bridges for her presentation, as well as the students for their “openness” discussing issues regarding money and popularity. As people come together, he said, it becomes clearer that one person within this group can truly “make a difference.”

Newtown High School senior Allison Berg said she enjoyed the presentation especially because of how it made “history come alive.”

“Reading about the civil rights movement is one thing,” she said, “but hearing it from someone who has lived it really makes a lasting impact.”