This first hand account goes through the amazing struggles a six-year-old girl went through to integrate a school in New Orleans. It shows in the simplest and most visceral terms the impact of this young girls action, not only for the country, but for Ruby herself. It also shows the amazing struggle that integration was. For those of us who were not in the South at that time, it is easy to think that Brown v. Board of Education (1954) happened and suddenly all the schools rolled over and said "Well, that's that, I guess we'll integrate." It is especially easier when we are younger. But this account of how Ruby Bridges single-handedly integrated a public New Orleans Elementary school six years after Brown v. BOE, shows that while laws may have changed, communities and sentiments did not.
What I loved most in this book was not the politics behind integration, the snip-its of newspaper commentary on the events, or the amazing black and white photographs from throughout the year, but the little anecdotes Ruby shares about her year. These make abundantly clear the impacts of this event on Ruby. Ruby, who was not a civil-rights activist, not a pioneer, but a six-year-old little girl.
Ruby explains that when she drove up to school the first day and saw all the protestors she thought to herself, "maybe it was Mardi Gras, the carnival that takes place in New Orleans every year. Mardi Gras was always noisy." She goes on to explain that seeing policemen guard the door to William Frantz, and everyone gathered around it, that it had to be some place very important "It must be college, I thought to myself."
She continues to explain her experience as the only child in Barbara Henry's first grade class, and practically the only child attending William Frantz for several months. She how she spent so much individual time with Mrs. Henry that she began to take on her Boston accent. She tells us in a heart-breaking account of how she was so lonely eating lunch alone that eventually she stopped eating lunch all together. Instead she hid her food around the classroom. When the room began to smell, Mrs. Henry knew something was wrong. "Mrs. Henry wasn't mad at me," she explains. "She was just sorry there were so many days when I hadn't eaten. After that she usually ate with me so I wouldn't be lonely."
The story of Ruby Bridges is incredibly poignant for children. It brings home the message that just because you are young, it does not mean that you cannot help change the world.
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