Ruby Bridges was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960.
This movie made me cry, I was so heart broken by how Ruby Bridges was treated! She was only 6, but was so strong. She is a very brave girl and she did not care what the white folks called her.
People are simply disgusting to minimize people by skin color!
Ruby you might not think you’re a hero… But to other people you are! You are A HERO and you are A PERSON WHO MADE AMERICA CHANGE!
this is white culture, this is their history, this is their legacy…being enraged at a damn baby just because she’s black.
she’s still alive by the way
Ruby Bridges in 2010
“As Bridges describes it, “Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.“ Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all very very proud of her.“
U.S. Marshals escorted Bridges to and from school
As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Ruby and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, “as if she were teaching a whole class.”
Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her; because of this, the U.S. Marshals dispatched by President Eisenhower, who were overseeing her safety, allowed Ruby to eat only the food that she brought from home.
Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said “scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.” At her mother’s suggestion, Bridges began to pray on the way to school, which she found provided protection from the comments yelled at her on the daily walks.”
THIS SHIT WAS ONLY 58 YEARS AGO. PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS RACIST TERRORISM AND ACTS LIKE IT ARE STILL ALIVE, AND THEIR KIDS ARE IN THEIR 40′S AND 50′S.
DON’T LET RACISM APOLOGISTS GET AWAY WITH “WHY ARE YOU LIVING IN THE PAST,” BULLSHIT ARGUMENTS. WE ARE LITERALLY STILL DEALING WITH THE FAMILIES THAT FORMED HATE MOBS OVER BLACK CHILDREN ATTENDING SCHOOL WITH WHITE KIDS.
US Senator David Purdue (R-GA/@sendavidperdue),
a grown-ass human being elected to high office in the most powerful
nation in the land, was asked a question about Brian Kemp, who is both a
(monumentally unhinged)
candidate for governor of Georgia and Georgia’s Secretary of State, in
charge of overseeing the election in which he is standing.
“Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s ® office is blocking 53,000 people from registering to vote, according to records obtained by the Associated Press, a huge number that could sway his gubernatorial race against Democrat Stacey Abrams. As TPM laid out this morning, Kemp has used a controversial “exact match” program to approve or block voter registrations that disproportionately impacts minority voters. Now we know exactly how many people that might affect this election. According to the AP, fully 70 percent of the voter applications that are being held up by Kemp’s office are from black people.”
Mugshot of a teenage girl arrested for protesting segregation, Mississippi, 1961.
Her name is Joan Trumpauer Mulholland. Her family disowned her for her activism. After her first arrest, she was tested for mental illness, because Virginia law enforcement couldn’t think of any other reason why a white Virginian girl would want to fight for civil rights.
She also created the Joan Trumpauer Mullholland Foundation. Most recently, she was interviewed on Samatha Bee’s Full Frontal on February 15 for their segment on Black History Month.
Don’t reduce civil rights heroes to “teenage girl”.
Her great-grandparents were slave owners in Georgia, and after the United States Civil War, they became sharecroppers. Trumpauer later recalled an occasion that forever changed her perspective, when visiting her family in Georgia during summer. Joan and her childhood friend Mary, dared each other to walk into “n*gger” town, which was located on the other side of the train tracks. Mulholland stated her eyes were opened by the experience: “No one said anything to me, but the way they shrunk back and became invisible, showed me that they believed that they weren’t as good as me. At the age of 10, Joan Trumpauer began to recognize the economic divide between the races. At that moment she vowed to herself that if she could do anything, to help be a part of the Civil Rights Movement and change the world, she would.
In the spring of 1960, Mulholland participated in her first of many sit-ins. Being a white, southern woman, her civil rights activism was not understood. She was branded as mentally ill and was taken in for testing after her first arrest. Out of fear of shakedowns, Mulholland wore a skirt with a deep, ruffled hem where she would hide paper that she had crumpled until it was soft and then folded neatly. With this paper, Mulholland was able to write a diary about her experiences that still exists today. In this diary, she explains what they were given to eat, and how they sang almost all night long. She even mentioned the segregation in the jail cells and stated, “I think all the girls in here are gems but I feel more in common with the Negro girls & wish I was locked in with them instead of these atheist Yankees.
Soon after Mulholland’s release, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton E. Holmes became the first African American students to enroll at the University of Georgia. Mulholland thought, “Now if whites were going to riot when black students were going to white schools, what were they going to do if a white student went to a black school?” She then became the first white student to enroll in Tougaloo College in Jackson, where she met Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Reverend Ed King, and Anne Moody.
She received many letters scolding or threatening her while she was attending Tougaloo. Her parents later tried to reconcile with their daughter, and they tried to bribe her with a trip to Europe. She accepted their offer and went with them during summer vacation. Shortly after they returned, however, she went straight back to Tougaloo College.
She ultimately retired after teaching English as a Second Language for 40 years and started the Joan Trumpauer Mulholland Foundation, dedicated to educating the youth about the Civil Rights Movement and how to become activists in their own communities.
I watched a YouTube video once (by a guy who’s name escapes me) about the importance of making sure the stories of white activists are told. His point was that it’s not about lavishing praise on them just because they were white and “woke”, it’s about letting other white allies see that others have come before them who were willing to sacrifice and do the hard work. This way they can see themselves in someone and realize that destroying inequality isn’t a fringe interest or just an “us vs. them” issue. It has to be ALL OF US.
It’s racial discrimination to treat someone less polite than someone else would be treated in the same circumstances, because of race. We can’t ignore the case of blatant racism. We MUST draw public attention to such cases. We must ensure that racists are identified and socially discredited. There are no reasons or excuses for racism. It’s just disgusting.
When Suh said she would report the action to Airbnb officials, the host replied: “It’s why we have Trump.”
Suh said that comment made her painfully aware of how threatened minorities have become under the Trump administration.
“For me personally, to now have someone say something racist to me and say it’s because of Trump, it was my fears coming true,” Suh said. “That people who held these racist beliefs felt emboldened.”
The host went on to say she would “not allow this country to be told what to do by foreigners.”
Suh is an American citizen who has called the U.S. home since she was 3 years old.
“If this is my experience as a light-skinned Asian woman, what is it like for people who have darker skin than me or are Muslim?” Suh wondered aloud. “What is it like for people who are undocumented or not U.S. citizens yet?”
BLESS HER FOR BEING VOCAL ABOUT THIS DO PEOPLE REALIZE HOW REAL THIS IS YET!?
Ok so i work for Airbnb. And they actually don’t fucking play with discrimination. At all. We were banning people who were going to Charlottesville for the riot. But they can’t do anything unless we are told. And the most common thing i hear is “i don’t want to start a ruckus or cause any trouble” but.. in order to prevent this stuff… we need people to. Don’t stay silent.
Reblogging again for that! ^^^^
Also apparently the host was fined $ 5,000 and was forced to attend a class on Asian Americans, as well as apologize and serve community service. Which is awesome.
