Exactly 60 years ago, on November 14, 1960, Lucille Bridges dropped her daughter Ruby off for first grade at William Frantz Public School in New Orleans, which was under a federal court order to admit its first African American students. U.S. Marshals had to escort 6-year-old Ruby past angry white mobs and hostile local police officers.
Lucille Bridges talking
“So many people just standing, screaming and hollering, ‘Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate. Two, four, six, eight, just tear that [bleep] away,’ and just every kind of thing they were saying, you know? But we just got out. … And they start pitching eggs and tomatoes and everything. But they didn’t hit us, because the marshals really took care. And when we walked to the step, when we got to the step, they had city policemen, and they says, ‘You cannot come in.’ And two of the marshals said, ‘The United States, the president, said we can.’”
— source democracynow.org | Nov 13, 2020