Person · 1954–
Ruby Bridges
The six-year-old who, escorted by federal marshals, desegregated a New Orleans elementary school in 1960.
A child on the front line of school desegregation.
On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges became the first Black child to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, walking past screaming mobs behind a wall of U.S. marshals. For a year she was taught alone, the only child whose parents had not pulled her out.
Immortalized in Norman Rockwell's painting "The Problem We All Live With," she has spent her adult life as an educator and advocate against racism.