Can you believe this was only 63yrs ago!

[Night409]

On this day 63 years ago Ruby Bridges was the first black child to attend an all white school.

The hate and deaths threats made by grown adults to a little 6 year old child is absolutely vile.

It’s hard enough to imagine these threats and hate made towards an adult but how could anyone do this to such a young child!

Many of these people are still alive today.

I’m not sure why I’m posting, I just thought I’d share.

god

looking at Rubys mothers face whilst she walks her baby through that barrage of hate brings tears to my eyes.

Unbelievable bravery.

It’s a pretty well known historical vignette but it doesn’t have the same constitutional significance as the Brown case, or the same precedent setting significance as Little Rock. I teach US civil rights at GCSE and it doesn’t appear in the course textbook at all. It’s a really interesting case and I do mention it but it didn’t break new ground in the same way as some of the other cases.

History is infinitely vast. Nobody can know everything and we all have different knowledge of historical events. It’s a common cognitive bias to overestimate the significance of what we do know and underestimate the importance and significance of what we don’t.

I remember a Dr Who episode where Bill, a modern black British woman, tells a group of Victorian men that she's considering training to be a police officer. They say "But you're a woman!" I heard American commentators wondering why the Victorians hadn't objected to her race - clearly not realising that there was nothing at all preventing a black man from being a Metropolitan Police officer in 1890, and a couple actually were. Mind you, I read a couple of US commentators referring to Mickey (black Londoner Dr Who character) as an African American

There was also the scene in the Family of Blood episode (David Tennant era) where Martha (also a modern black British woman) tells a nurse from the early 1910s (in a UK public school) that she is a doctor. The nurse says "I doubt that very much". I took that as being because she was black, as well as because she was female.

However, black GIs found they were treated much better in the UK than they were in the US when they were here in WW2. In general, anyway.

In my example it's a process problem because it's been repeatedly proven that to avoid bias in recruitment the CV should have the name ( and possibly school names and home addresses ) stripped before being passed to the recruiting manager but this doesn't happen in many cases

The problem is you have to take so much out, don't you. Also language skills because if someone speaks Urdu, they are unlikely to be white (or black, come to that).

My South London primary was mixed since the early 50s aand my secondary school in the late 60s was officially the most racially diverse school in the UK. This anniversary applies purely to the US (& maybe to just one specific State).

Not sure what that's got to do with this thread though.

It would be because there were very few black people living in the area at that time, not because black children had to go to a different school.

She was the first black student to attend that specific school. The wording of “an all white school” has caused some confusion, I think.

I think a lot of people have read it as the first to attend any all white school, rather than as the first to attend at one specific school.

She was one of the first in Louisiana but Louisiana was slow to desegregate. It made headlines at the time but it wasn’t the first school desegregation. Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 is the really landmark case in that it was the first time that a president sent in federal troops (and federalised the Arkansas national guard) in order to enforce a desegregation order.

But the Little Rock 9 were also not “the first”. Following the Brown vs Topeka ruling in 1954 there was a wave of school desegregations that didn’t make the news because they didn’t attract the same resistance, for example in the District of Colombia.

My husband says the same although he is older than you so for him it was school in the 50s.

Equally horrific scenes to innocent school children a lot closer to our shores and only 20 odd years ago.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-58437288

No, it wasn't confined to just one US state, it was pretty much the whole of the south - those states which had historically used slavery.
That was the ostensible cause of the civil war.

Am always wary when the word 'FIRST' is used, as here. Because quite often it's used erroneously (as here) - which is not to downplay the bravery of Ruby Bridges. Similarly Rosa Parks's protest against bus segregation is usually described as a 'FIRST', except that it wasn't, Claudette Calvin, and most probably, others (who went unrecorded) preceded her.

I can relate to this too. I wasn't the only mixed race child, there were two in my primary school.

That was in the early fifties too. Racism was all pervasive at that time.

Yes, legislation has made racism politically incorrect, but it will never change how certain people think.

This is noteworthy because it was late, not because it was early. There have been racially mixed schools in American for over a century before this. There's a school in Massachusetts which was never segregated and had its first black pupil in 1843. Iowa was the first state to desegregate all its schools in 1868.

An interesting side story, James McCune Smith was born in slavery in the US but went on to be the first African American to qualify as a doctor (he had to come to Scotland to get into a University though).

London did have mixed schools because the UK did not have state sanctioned segregation.

It's really annoying that the OP implies this was the case worldwide or in the UK. This is US history, not ours.

A 6 year old carrying that burden makes me feel uncomfortable. My kids are mixed race and maybe I'm a wimp but I couldn't do it to a six year old.

My late black FIL came here to fight in WWII. The stories I've heard does not convince me black service men were treated well by the British. Some were but some not. He was even asked to leave a church when he tried to attend a service one Sunday.

Maybe black Americans got treated better than other black servicemen.

It wasn’t late enough to be especially noteworthy either. Baton Rouge still hadn’t desegregated a full decade later in 1970. Like many historical examples it’s one that just happened to be well recorded, mostly because it gained a lot of press attention at the time (because of the timing, the political climate, human interest and a million other factors). There were hundreds of similar cases across the US. Desegregation was slow and didn’t happen because of one pioneer but because of thousands of them all over the south who were brave enough to be “the first” at their school.

I asked my Mum about that and she said, yes it’s true and we were all absolutely disgusted by it. It wasn’t the norm and it wasn’t acceptable to decent people. Apparently she saw it on the news and there was real anger and push back towards it from many. I think that’s really important to know tbh.

I watched a documentary a few years ago talking about an American state that was still operating racial segregation. All the white families sent their children to one school and the black children attended another. One white girl chose to attend the black school and she was giving her opinion on the situation.

I’ll see if I can find the link.

I think it was this;

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dlYDfzMdH4w

It's really annoying that the OP implies this was the case worldwide or in the UK. This is US history, not ours

Absolutely! I grew up in London. I just checked my school photos. In my primary school there were 6 children who were not white and in my secondary school between 13 and 18 depending on the year. I am obviously not saying there was no racism but for sure no segregation.

I would never assume that what happens in the U.K. is true for everywhere so why does the OP assume that a situation in the US (segregation) was universal?

In my primary school there were 6 children who were not white and in my secondary school between 13 and 18 depending on the year. I am obviously not saying there was no racism but for sure no segregation

I meant to say, I started school in 1964

I don't know whether to be more shocked at people not realising that it was a US story, or that people think that in some US states they don't still have segregated (obviously not officially) colleges, or they did 15 years ago when I last visited Alabama. Was being shown around the town by a resident who pointed out the 'black colleges' .... sadly still happening.

Had exactly the same thought as you when I read this.

I can't be shocked to be honest that it's 63 years ago when it's a different culture and country. It's not comparable. It was 90s in South Africa.