Ruby Bridges

Ruby Bridges is an American civil-rights activist whose 1960 walk through a New Orleans elementary school door — escorted by federal marshals through crowds of segregationist protesters — became one of the images of the American civil-rights movement. She was born Ruby Nell Bridges on September 8, 1954, in Tylertown, Mississippi, the eldest of five children. The family moved to New Orleans when Ruby was four, and her parents enrolled her in the all-Black Johnson Lockett Elementary School.

In 1960, the New Orleans Public Schools were under federal court order to desegregate following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. The school district, attempting to limit how many Black students would actually transfer, administered a placement test that only six Black children passed; four of the six were assigned to William Frantz Elementary School in the Lower Ninth Ward — and on November 14, 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first of those four children to actually walk through the door.

Bridges was escorted to school every day for the entire 1960–1961 school year by four federal marshals, walking past crowds of segregationist white parents and protesters who screamed insults at her, threw objects, and held signs threatening her family. White parents pulled their children out of the school, and Bridges spent the entire year as the only student in her class — taught by a single teacher, Barbara Henry, who had moved from Boston specifically to teach the desegregating Black students. Norman Rockwell's 1964 painting The Problem We All Live With — depicting a small Black girl walking past racist graffiti — was based on Bridges's daily walk to school.

Bridges has continued her civil-rights work into her late sixties through the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she founded in 1999 to promote tolerance and respect in education. She has authored several books about her experience, including Through My Eyes (1999) and the children's picture book Ruby Bridges Goes to School (2009). She received the Presidential Citizens Medal from Bill Clinton in 2001.

Her name Ruby is from the Latin ruber meaning "red," referring to the red gemstone. Ruby has been continuously climbing in American naming since the early 2000s vintage-revival wave and currently sits in the US top 75 girls' names.