Ruby Bridges — William Frantz Elementary School

November 14, 1960. Four federal marshals walked a six-year-old girl past a mob outside William Frantz Elementary School at 3811 N. Galvez Street. Ruby Bridges thought the crowd was Mardi Gras — the shouting, the things being thrown, that's what Mardi Gras looked like in New Orleans. She was the first Black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the city. White families pulled their children out the moment Bridges entered. Every teacher refused to teach her except Barbara Henry, who had come from Boston. For a year Henry taught Bridges alone in an empty classroom. The first day Bridges and her mother spent in the principal's office; they couldn't reach the classroom until the second day. On that second day a Methodist minister, Lloyd Anderson Foreman, walked his five-year-old daughter Pam through the crowd. A few days later other white families began bringing their children back. But Bridges remained the only student in her class until the following year. Every morning one woman threatened to poison her. Another held up a black baby doll in a coffin. The marshals let Bridges eat only food she brought from home. She was not allowed to participate in recess. Child psychiatrist Robert Coles volunteered to counsel her, meeting weekly in the Bridges home. Her father lost his job as a gas station attendant. The grocery store banned the family. Her grandparents, sharecroppers in Mississippi, were forced off their land. A neighbor gave her father work. Local people babysat, watched the house, walked behind the marshals' car on the drive to school. Norman Rockwell painted what he saw in the reports — *The Problem We All Live With* — published in *Look* in 1964. A statue of Ruby Bridges now stands in front of the school, which still operates. View from the sidewalk.