It was this civil-rights infrastructure that campaigned to reintegrate the school system in 1960, when the images of 6-year-old Ruby Bridges and angry white mobs became iconic. THEN: Escorted by federal marshals past screaming protesters, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first African-American student at William Frantz Elementary School on Nov. 14, 1960…

That unforgettable image of the tiny Bridges waking down the school steps surrounded by towering federal marshals endures as an iconic symbol of school integration in New Orleans -- and in America.

Four years later, Norman Rockwell depicted her brave act of just walking to school, escorted by federal marshals, in a painting, “The Problem We All Live With.”  When recalling the first trip to her school, Ruby Bridges recalls today, “I saw barricades and police officers and just people everywhere. It was on display in the White House in 2011, After a series of appeals, in 1960, Wright set down a plan that required the integration of the schools on a grade-per-year basis, beginning with the first grade.

This is a study of why one city, which seemingly was ready to be a leader in racial matters, became instead a center of resistance to schooI integration. On the road to Civil Rights, even children became public figures, such as six-year-old Ruby Bridges, who integrated an all-white elementary school in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. During the 1960-61 school year, the New Orleans Police Department kept a 24-hour guard on the homes of the four little girls and their parents, along with the few white parents who dared to keep their children in newly desegregated schools.

Ruby Bridges, in full Ruby Nell Bridges, married name Ruby Bridges-Hall, (born September 8, 1954, Tylertown, Mississippi, U.S.), American activist who became a symbol of the civil rights movement and who was, at age six, the youngest of a group of African American students to integrate schools …

A report shows too few U.S. high-schoolers know about the Civil Rights movement.A short biography of Thurgood Marshall and a poster with a quotation by the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. On the road to Civil Rights, even children became public figures, such as six-year-old Ruby Bridges, who integrated an all-white elementary school in New Orleans on November 14, 1960.

Then, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges became one of the first African American students to integrate a school in the American South.

Artist Norman Rockwell painted for Look magazine a work titled "The Problem We All Live With," which shows Bridges being escorted to school. Flanked by four federal marshals, Ruby was escorted to school through angry mobs that threw things and yelled racial epithets at her.

They saw change, and what they thought was being taken from them.

The story of Burks and Bridges began in New Orleans, LA in the fall of 1960. I had no idea that they were here to keep me out of the school.

They never saw a child.”The story of Ruby Bridges and desegregation is part of Find educational resources related to this program - and access to thousands of curriculum-targeted digital resources for the classroom at PBS LearningMedia.Major corporate support for The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is provided by The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is a film by In 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, heralding a movement of resistance, with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as its public face. In 1956 U.S. District Court Judge J. Skelly Wright ordered the desegregation of the New Orleans public schools. When 6-year-old Ruby Bridges changed everything