Preface to THROUGH MY EYES
by Ruby Bridges
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PREFACE TO MY STORY
When I was six years old, the civil rights movement came knocking at my door. It was 1960, and history pushed in and swept me up in a whirlwind. At the time, I knew little about the racial fears and hatred in Louisiana, where I was growing up. Young children never know about racism at the start. It's we adults who teach it.
In spite of the aftereffects of the whirlwind, I feel privileged now to have been part of the civil rights struggle. The 1950's and 60's were important decades: Negroes, as African Americans were known then, dared at last to demand equal treatment as American citizens. School integration was only one part of the struggle, but an absolutely essential part.
In 1954 - coincidentally, the year I was born - the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the end of "separate but equal" education for African-American children. Because of her race, Linda Brown was not allowed to attend her local elementary school. All nine justices of the Supreme Court agreed that Linda had a legal right to go to that school. But for years afterward, the Court looked the other way when states in the South ignored its order. Black children in states like Louisiana and Mississippi continued to attend all-black public schools. White children went to separate and usually better schools.
By 1957, less than two percent of southern schools had been integrated. That year, nine black high school students enrolled in a white school in Little Rock, Arkansas. The white segregationists in Arkansas were furious. President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered federal troops - soldiers with rifles and machine guns mounted on military jeeps - to protect the "Little Rock Nine" in their school.
Even after the events in Little Rock, Louisiana continued to ignore its African-American children. However, the civil rights movement was growing stronger. A federal court gave the city a deadline for school integration: September 1960.
I don't remember everything about that school year, but there are events and feelings I will never forget. In writing this book, I recall how integration looked to me then, when I was six and limited to my own small world. However, as an adult, I wanted to fill in some of the blanks about what was a serious racial crisis in the American South. I have tried to give you the bigger picture - through my eyes.
The National Guard escorted the Little Rock Nine to school to protect the students from angry segregationists.
Photo: UPI/Corbis
From Through My Eyes, copyright © by Ruby Bridges. All rights reserved.
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