(AURN News) — On this day 65 years ago — Nov. 14, 1960 — 6-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first Black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. Following the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, federal Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the desegregation of the city’s public schools.
To limit integration, officials required Black children to take an entrance exam; six passed, but only Bridges was assigned to William Frantz Elementary School.
That morning, U.S. Marshals escorted her through a large, hostile crowd. Inside the school, only one teacher, Barbara Henry, agreed to teach her, and Bridges spent the year as her sole student.
Her family faced economic retaliation, but national support followed. Bridges later became a prominent civil rights advocate.
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