Essay On Ruby Bridges

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With how culturally and ethnically diverse schools in the United States are today, it is hard to believe that there was once a time when schools were segregated based on the color of your skin. It was during this time that the United States was split in half between the “whites” and the “colored,” with one of these two sides living much more luxuriously than the other. The whites had access to better water fountains, restrooms, homes, and most importantly, access to better schools. That is until a young black girl decided to break these boundaries and change the face of history for the civil rights movement. Ruby Bridges set up the foundations for desegregation in public schools, essentially forming the bridge that black students needed to …show more content…

Board of Education was ruled in favor of Brown, declaring that schools could not be segregated based on the color of one’s skin. Although it was declared unconstitutional to do so, schools still enforced their outdated policies of segregation. It wasn’t until around five years after the Brown vs. Board of Education case that a white school would see integration by black students. During this time, Ruby Bridges was just six years old when she received a letter from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Enclosed in the letter was an invitation for Ruby to be integrated into the New Orleans, all white, school system. Only five other black children received this invitation, and two of those five declined the offer. Somebody had to be the first to break down the color barrier between schools, and it wouldn’t be for the faint of …show more content…

As the chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she set up in 1999, she leads in promoting values of “tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences.” She has also been quoted when asked about the goal of the Ruby Bridges Foundation that, “racism is a grown-up disease and that we must stop using our children to spread it.” To Ruby Bridges, if we allow our children to be molded by the racism of the adult world, then they will grow up only to spread the hatred and prejudice of the world that molded them. Ruby Bridges has also written/published her own book called Through My Eyes which goes further in depth of her experience with the Civil Rights Movement and her reflections on it as an adult. Ruby Bridges remains a heroic icon in terms of the Civil Rights Movement and still keeps her image and legacy as sharp as ever to this

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