Through My Eyes: "Another First Grade"–"Let Me Bring You Up to Date"

Attendance dwindled until on November 17 three Negro girls and one white child were the only pupils present at McDonogh School No. 19, which normally has 467 pupils.

Parents and children from integrated New Orleans schools bore a miniature black coffin, containing a blackened effigy of U.S. Judge J. Skelly Wright, into the Louisiana Capitol....

Some of the group feigned weeping and mourning, others laughed.

Some of the group feigned weeping and mourning, others laughed.

The blackened doll inside the yard-long coffin wore a black suit. In its pocket was a small gavel.

Rioters on the streets were looking for trouble. Whites assaulted blacks in broad daylight, and blacks fought back, even though the NAACP urged them not to. Vandals broke store windows and took what they could.

When Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison appeared on television and called for calm, militant segregationists were enraged.

City School Superintendent James F. Redmond made it clear that school integration would continue after Thanksgiving. However, resentful white parents promised not to give up.

Thurgood Marshall, counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, opposed any suspension of desegregation.

They thought my father would be lynched—murdered by a lawless mob.

The father of the 6-year-old girl who was transferred from a Negro school to William Frantz has been discharged [from his job]....

He conceded that the Negro had been employed by him for four years and that he was a good worker.

John F. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, had just been elected president, and segregationists in Baton Rouge knew that Washington would be less sympathetic to their cause than before.

I learned later that Mrs. Henry was a northerner, from Boston, Massachusetts, and she did not have a southern drawl.

I thought New Orleans would be a romantic place, filled with southern hospitality.

Nobody at the school lifted a finger to make Ruby’s life easier. The principal was a rigid, prejudiced woman who gave me no guidance or help.

When I discovered how the other teachers were spending their time, I was appalled.

I didn’t want to allow hate to enter her life and in any way diminish her beautiful spirit.

At that point, he became interested in me and wondered how I could go through such an ordeal.

My mother taught Mrs. Coles how to cook gumbo, and they became good friends.

"I knew I was just Ruby,” she told me once, in retrospect, "just Ruby trying to go to school, and worrying that I couldn’t be helping my momma with the kids younger than me, like I did on the weekends and in the summer. But I guess I also knew I was the Ruby who had to do it—go into that school and stay there, no matter what those people said, standing outside....”

Ruby had a will and used it to make an ethical choice; she demonstrated moral stamina; she possessed honor, courage.

Ruby had a will and used it to make an ethical choice; she demonstrated moral stamina; she possessed honor, courage.

It will be done by rejecting the racism, materialism, and violence that has characterized Western civilization and especially by working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace.

One of the changes I made after my brother’s death was to go back to the Frantz school to do volunteer work as a parent liaison.

We started a ballet class, an African dance class, and a class on manners and etiquette.

I believe strongly in literacy and the power of education.

When the scary subject of race is finally broached, kids want to talk and talk.

For a long time, I was tempted to feel bitter about the school integration experience, not understanding why I had to go through it and go through it alone. Now I know it was meant to be that way.

I have received two honorary college degrees in recent years. I have been featured in newspaper articles and made television appearances and I’ve become a public speaker, a job I never would have dreamed of doing.