Ruby Bridges was the first Black child to attend an all-white school in the South. She attended William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, starting in November 1960 at the age of six. Bridges was one of six students to pass a test to determine if she could attend an all-white school, due to the 1954 Supreme Court ruling of Brown vs. The Board of Education which ordered all schools to desegregate. The white parents all withdrew their children from the school, and the staff refused to teach Bridges, except for one teacher: Barbara Henry, who had come from Boston. For the first year, Henry taught Bridges alone, just the two of them in the classroom.
After graduating from a desegregated high school, Bridges worked as a travel agent for 15 years and later became a full-time parent. She is now chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which she formed in 1999 to promote "the values of tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences".
