I distinctly remember my mother reading to me author Robert Coles’ The Story of Ruby Bridges, a classic about a 6-year-old girl’s work to integrate a New Orleans school in 1960. The story shows the hateful stares and anger-induced racial slurs Ruby faced on her walk to William Frantz Elementary School, and I’ll never forget wondering how so much contempt could be directed toward someone so young and innocent.
It seemed inhumanely cruel, but the story taught me something about how hate works and also how perseverance can extinguish even the vilest of hateful efforts. So it is heartbreaking to learn that the mother of that little girl-turned-activist, the woman so invested in her daughter’s education she would risk her own life on a daily basis—Lucille Bridges—has died.
Ruby Bridges, who was born the very year the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision determined that racial segregation in schools was unconstitutional, credited her mother Lucille and her father, Abon Bridges, for the decision that ultimately made her a civil rights icon, the Associated Press reported. “Today our country lost a hero,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “Brave, progressive, a champion for change. She helped alter the course of so many lives by setting me out on my path as a six year old little girl. Our nation lost a Mother of the Civil Rights Movement today. And I lost my mom. I love you and am grateful for you. May you Rest In Peace.”
The daughter of Mississippi sharecroppers, Lucille Bridges had a third-grade education but wanted more for her children, so the family moved to New Orleans, ABC-affiliated WGNO-TV reported. Years earlier, she said in an interview with the Spring Branch Independent School District that the day before her daughter's first day of school Nov. 14, 1960, the Orleans Parish school superintendent told her and her husband "we had to pray because things were going to get really worse." She said when she and her family arrived at the school, people were hollering “'two, four, six, eight, we don't want to integrate.'" The crowd threw eggs and tomatoes at them, Lucille Bridges said. "And when they followed us home, they started pitching bottles and things," the mother added.
She detailed seeing federal marshals and machine guns. “And that's the way we lived for an entire year," Lucille Bridges said. Still, she said her daughter’s education was worth it. "I wanted it better for my kids than it was for us," she said.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called Lucille Bridges "one of the mothers of the Civil Rights Movement" in a Facebook post Tuesday. "Lucille's strength was unbounded during this period," the mayor said. "Her husband was reluctant when the request came from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to participate.
“Lucille insisted, seeing the action as an opportunity to help all Black children, and walked Ruby, with federal marshals, past chanting and taunting white protesters and to the schoolhouse. Mother and daughter both revealed their character and courage. Today, folks recall Ruby as the little girl depicted in Norman Rockwell's painting 'The Problem We All Live With,' and more recently might see a reimagining of the image now including Vice President-elect Kamala Harris walking alongside little Ruby. I think I speak for all mothers who want the best for their children when I hope for the same moral courage, bravery and love as that of Lucille Bridges. May she rest in God's perfect peace."
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