The clash between
peaceful protests and violent resistance would produce images
That cause the country to sit up and take notice
In New Orleans on the morning of November 14
1960
federal marshals escorted a six-year-old girl
Named Ruby bridges to the local all-white elementary
school I
remember turning on to the streets I
saw
barricades and police officers and
Just people everywhere
when we saw all of that I
Immediately thought that it was Mardi Gras. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school
Ruby were you scared I would have been terrified. I wasn't actually because you know it's very hard for parents
I think to explain to a six-year-old. What was actually happening. They didn't say it's the white school. You're making history
I remember them saying Ruby you're gonna. Go to a new school today, and you better behave
But Ruby was making history
six years earlier after decades of struggle the n-double-a-cp
had won a major legal victory
Brown vs.. Board of Education in which the Supreme Court declared that the doctrine of separate
But equal schools was unconstitutional
But in many places that triumph did not translate into change
For years after Brown much of the South simply refused to integrate
now
Ruby would be one of six New Orleans children chosen to desegregate?
several all-white elementary schools
They were screaming and shouting and chanting two four six eight. We don't want to integrate
The mothers of downtown New Orleans screaming at a Negro child as she entered the William Frantz elementary school
First in the city to be integrated
Once I got in school all of these people here rushed inside of the building
And we're taking out their children over five hundred kids walked out of school that day
What is your reaction of the court's decision continuing integrate
They didn't see a child
They saw
change
And what they thought was being taken?
from them
They never saw a child
