I had no idea that this iconic Normal Rockwell painting was based on an event that happened in New Orleans. And the little girl, Ruby Bridges, still does live in the metro area. So many people forget that Jim Crow laws were not part of some distant, historical past. They were in effect during our lifetimes – that is, during the lifetimes of middle-aged people like myself. So I found this article fascinating:
She was 6 the first time she did it. She was the first black child to walk into an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. It was November 1960, three years after the Little Rock Nine desegregated Central High School in Arkansas, three years before Tulane University would accept its first black students.
It was an era of American flash points. Ruby was in the cross hairs. She was a test case. She was on television. She walked up the front steps of William Frantz Elementary on North Galvez Street. Over the next few hours, a few hundred white kids walked out of the school and down those steps, many never to return.
… Norman Rockwell painted the poster: Ruby with four federal marshals towering above her. He called it “The Problem We All Live With.” It became even more famous than her. Nobody knew what to make of it. What, folks wondered, is the problem?
However you define the problem, while it’s an exaggeration to say that it has been solved, it’s indisputable that tremendous progress has been made. In legal terms, society is integrated. In social terms, for the vast majority of us, racism is unacceptable. There are obviously still issues that need to be addressed, but the progress of the last fifty years should be acknowledged.
| Ruby Bridges on the Obamas |
“She had Secret Service, I had Federal Marshals.”
Those eight words sum up the societal changes we’ve undergone in the last fifty years. And I’m thankful for it.
