Ruby Bridges(1954 - Present Day)
Born in 1954, Bridges was born the year of Brown v, Board. Still, certain exams similar to voting literacy tests were put in place to bar African Americans from attending the all-white schools. At six-years-old, Ruby and five other black children were admitted entry to the schools. Two never left their original school, three went to a different all-white elementary, and Ruby went to William Frantz Elementary School alone. Police officers lead Bridges and her mother into the school as all the white parents gathered to hurl hideous slurs and threats at her. They pulled their children out of the school and only one teacher, Barbara Henry, was willing to teach her. The two spent the majority of the year alone together. Bridges' family received tons of backlash for this, such as unemployment, eviction, and shunning, but her mother especially persevered to ensure Ruby received the education that she and her husband and their parents had been denied. By the early 1970s, when Bridges graduated, she received her diploma from a desegregated school. She became a travel agent for fifteen years before becoming a full-time mother and author. She would write about her experiences in books such as Through My Eyes and This Is My Time, later receiving the Carter G. Woodson Book Award. In 1999, she established the Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote equality through education. Nowadays, Bridges has remained a lifelong activist and is alive and well at sixty-six years old.
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