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Here’s How You Checkmate Hate: Ruby Bridges Tells Her Story
A six-year-old Bridges integrated a New Orleans school and changed America forever. Her new book, out today, details her life.
Ruby Bridges, whose six-year-old self was memorialized by a Norman Rockwell painting after she integrated a New Orleans public school, is very much alive and is telling her story. Her book, This Is Your Time, releases today. At the same time, Bridges is also being talked up due to a viral meme featuring her image juxtaposed against Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. That meme is both powerful and polarizing for supporters, students of history, and activists.
That the meme makes headlines during the week of the 60th anniversary of Bridges’ historic integration of William Frantz Elementary School is apropos. She stoically walked into school solo as mobs of angry White adults yelled and hollered and spit at her. Federal marshals had to escort the child because many of the White adults threatened her life and spirit.
