Ruby Bridges Resonates With Edgewood Teen

As Ruby Bridges spoke about making civil rights history simply by going to school, 15-year-old Janeska reflected on her own experience at a new high school this year.

Bridges was the featured speaker at Yale’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration ceremony, which drew several hundred attendees from the university and beyond to the Woolsey Hall auditorium on Wednesday evening. She spoke alongside local educator and equity advocate Dr. William Johnson as well as Yale senior Stephanie Owusu.

Janeska learned about Bridges that morning, when she Googled Bridges’ name and asked the teachers at her former middle school about the civil rights hero. She had heard about the event from local bookseller and literary community-builder Lauren Anderson, who sat beside her at the event. The pair exchanged meaningful eye contact whenever Bridges said something profound.

The room held a reverent silence as Bridges recounted what it was like to singlehandedly integrate Louisiana’s William Frantz Elementary School at just 6years old in 1960.

That year, Bridges was one of only six kids in all of New Orleans to pass an exam for Black children seeking to enroll in white schools, a test ​“set up to eliminate us.” She was the only kid to be placed at William Frantz. A group of federal marshals escorted her to school through a mob of white people yelling threats and throwing objects at her. 

At first, the principal kept her isolated in a classroom of her own, making sure she never so much as saw her white peers. ​“I could hear kids, but I could never see them,” she said. She was forbidden from using the school playground. She ate lunch in her classroom.

“What protected me was the innocence of a child,” Bridges recalled. 

No one had explained to her what her presence at the formerly all-white school meant. She had only her six years of life experience to make sense of a moment in her life that held the whole country’s attention. When she passed the test and soaked in a stream of praise from family and neighbors, she figured she must have skipped a dozen grades and qualified for college. When she saw the riot outside her school, she deduced that she’d stumbled into a Mardi Gras celebration. 

Bridges said that she finally pieced together what was happening when she met another white child at the school, who called her the n‑word and said his mom had forbidden him from playing with her. Today, Bridges said, she doesn’t blame that child, whom she sees as having absorbed prejudice from his parents.

“None of our babies come into the world knowing to dislike the other babies because of the color of our skin,” Bridges said.

Janeska was struck by this idea — that ​“we learn from our parents how to treat others and what they think is right and wrong,” as she put it after the event.

The teenager lives in Edgewood. She used to attend Saint Martin de Porres middle school in the Hill. This past fall she started high school at a private school in Middletown, where it’s been trickier to feel comfortable and fit in.

“My school before, we were a much smaller school. Everyone knew to get along, or at least try to,” Janeska said. At her school now, though, the culture is different. ​“Everyone has different opinions,” and there’s more ​“picking and choosing” of friends.

“I want kids — people in general — to get along,” Janeska said. To not judge each other by how they look, but as Bridges had said, ​“by their actions.” And even then, to look past first impressions and give each other a chance.