Civil Rights Icon Ruby Bridges Will Speak at Smith

Editor’s Note, Wednesday, Jan. 31: Please note that the location of this event has been moved to John M. Greene Hall.

Ruby Bridges—the civil rights icon whose historic arrival at her New Orleans first-grade classroom was immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s painting The Problem We All Live With—will deliver a Presidential Colloquium at Smith College at 4 p.m. Friday, Feb. 2. The event, which will take place in John M. Greene Hall, is open to the public at no charge

Often called “the youngest foot soldier” of the Civil Rights movement, Ruby Bridges was born in Mississippi in 1954 and moved with her family to New Orleans when she was 2 years old. In 1960, because of her high test scores, she was selected to attend William Frantz Public School, becoming one of the first black children to integrate New Orleans’ all-white public school system.

Arriving for her first day of first grade, at age 6, Bridges was escorted by federal marshals and greeted by an angry mob. Over the course of the year, parents withdrew their children from William Frantz; all but one of the school’s white teachers refused to teach the young Bridges. Still, she attended school without fail, never missing a day that year.

Ruby’s historic walk to her first day of class was immortalized in Norman Rockwell’s The Problem We All Live With, which was featured in Look magazine in 1964. In 2011, Bridges visited President Barack Obama at the White House to view the Oval Office installation of the painting. She was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton in 2001.

Bridges currently lives in New Orleans. Her 1999 memoir is Through My Eyes.