Ruby Bridges has always been a civil rights advocate, with her experience as the first Black child to enter an all-white school in the South making her a household name. Though her experience in school was harrowing due to blatant racism and the targeting of her family, Bridges never missed a day of school. The couple married the year prior and lived in Tylertown, Mississippi. Abon was a mechanic and veteran of the Korean War, while Lucille did domestic work Rose Two years after Bridges was born, the family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in search of a more fruitful job market as well as better-quality education for their children Smith Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, was decided.
This decision required all schools to desegregate, providing Black students with the opportunity to attend what were once all-white institutions. Segregation, both by law and by custom, started soon after the abolition of slavery in the 19th century.
Though various amendments to the Constitution had been passed to provide African Americans with rights to citizenship and the right to vote, other legal decisions were made that worked to nullify these amendments.
Plessy v. Ferguson , which held that separate but equal facilities did not violate the U. The Brown v. Board ruling in overturned these separations in the realm of education.
Even with this ruling, Louisiana struggled to enact integration. They became aware of Ruby when they discovered that she was one of six children who passed the required entrance exams. These exams aimed to see which African American students could succeed within all-white institutions. This prompted her to encourage Ruby to pursue an education, no matter the many trials that lay ahead. With this decision, Bridges became a trailblazer at just the age of six as the first African American child in the South to attend an all-white elementary school.
