Browsing Category Race Matters

Baby Boomers who are history buffs will be captivated by the documentary Freedom Riders which aired on PBS on May 16 and 17^th. The film based on a book by the same title, gives a heart-wrenching and downright disturbing look back at the segregated south in 1961, as it justly acknowledges the integrated groups of college students whose bus trips to Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, Jackson, Mississippi and other cities in the Deep South carried them to the front lines of the civil rights movement and helped end Jim Crow practices.

 The Freedom Riders were trained to be non-violent and the young men and women were unprepared for the danger that awaited them once they arrived at the destination cities where they were threatened, degraded, savagely beaten and imprisoned by angry, racist mobs. Even viewers of the film who watched TV news coverage of civil rights protests decades ago may be moved to tears by some narratives in the film. Particularly disturbing is one female student’s graphic account of the examination of her private parts by a jail guard who dipped her gloved hand into what the student believed was Lysol before inserting her finger into the young girl’s cavity.

The film’s award winning director, Stanley Nelson, peppered black and white photographs with interviews featuring a number of the now aged Freedom Riders who were among the numerous students that traveled south on Greyhound and Trailway buses, some of which were disabled and firebombed by frenzied mobs. The haunting songs occasionally played over still shots intensify the viewer’s recollection of a period that many Americans would like to forget. One unsettling statement that exemplifies the mentality of the southern racists was, at one point, repeated off-camera by a faceless voice, “I’ve got to hate somebody.” 

Freedom Riders gives earned recognition to people who were as instrumental, but perhaps not as widely acclaimed for affecting changes in the civil rights movement as were more notable personalities like Dr. King and Rosa Parks. The students, too, were heroes.

The film is difficult to watch but hard to turn off. It highlights a disturbing period in America, and should be viewed by all, especially today’s young African Americans who have little or no knowledge of their cultural history. It might just enlighten the minds of some of today’s wayward youths who think that being heroic means living the thug life.

The film runs nearly two hours and is currently available for free viewing in its entirety on PBS. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/watch

On this day in 1960 – Lucille and Abon Bridges, the parents of Ruby Bridges, responded to the call of the NAACP and volunteered their six year old  daughter to participate in the integration of the New Orleans School System.  Protected by U.S. Marshals, Rudy was the lone black child to enroll at the William Frantz Elementary School and the first black child to attend an all white elementary school in the south. As the Marshals led Rudy into the school, crowds of angry whites threw tomatoes and other objects at the young girl and called her names. Once she was inside white parents began withdrawing their children from the school. White teachers at the school quit their jobs rather than teach a black student. Only one white teacher, Barbara Henry, from Boston, a newcomer to the city and the school, was willing to teach Rudy. For over a year Rudy was the only student in Mrs. Henry’s class and just like her young student, each day the teacher had to pass through mobs of protesters shouting racist insults and threats.  Rudy’s first school day was depicted by artist Norman Rockwell in a famous painting  titled The Problem We All Live With.  Life Magazine published a two-page illustration of the painting in 1964.  It is one of Rockwell’s most famous works.

In 1995, Rudy worked as a volunteer at Frantz, her old alma mater, that’s when Robert Coles was inspired to publish The Story of Ruby Bridges, a children’s book about her. It was the first book of its kind, to take a subject like racism and try to explain it to children. The book became a bestseller.

In 1996, 35 years after she integrated Frantz, Rudy reunited with her former teacher, Barbara Henry, on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

In 1999, Rudy published Through My Eyes, her own account of her days at Frantz. The book won numerous literary prizes.

In October, 2006, the city of Alameda Unified School District dedicated a new elementary school to Ruby Bridges, and issued a proclamation in her honor.

Ruby Bridges, now Ruby Bridges Hall, still lives in New Orleans.