The Courage & Spirit of Ruby Bridges, Captured in Rockwell Painting “The Problem We All Live With,” Is on Display at White House
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 30, 2011
Exploring segregation and integration in America: Norman Rockwell's 1964 "The Problem We All Live With" painting with first-grader student Ruby Bridges captures the racial tension of her attending an all-white elementary school in November 1960
Norman Rockwell, one of America’s most beloved and prolific artists, has one of his more compelling, controversial paintings expressing social commentary on display in the White House. “The Problem We All Live With” captured a historic moment during the 1960s Civil Rights movement — Rockwell’s shows first-grader Ruby Bridges on November 14, 1960 being escorted to school by U.S. Marshals on the first day of court-ordered desegregation of New Orleans, Louisiana, public schools. Ruby was the first African-American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South — an important step to overcoming segregation and racism in American history, but one that took its toll on Ruby’s family. Her attendance at William Frantz Elementary was watched and followed with a mix of emotions — fascination, anger, fear, hate, hope — by the entire nation. This gripping Rockwell painting was originally published on the cover of a 1964 issue of Look magazine, four years after the historic event.
Now Ruby Bridges Hall, she was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Bill Clinton in 2001. In October 2006, the Alameda Unified School District in California dedicated a new elementary school to Ruby Bridges. In 2010, she had a 50th year reunion at William Frantz Elementary with Pam Foreman Testroet. Pam, at the young age of 5, was the first white student to break the nasty boycott that ensued from Bridges’ attending the school. Ruby is now the chair of The Ruby Bridges Foundation.
The Rockwell painting is currently displayed in the West Wing of the White House near the president’s office.
From Politico, Norman Rockwell painting sends rare White House message on race:
Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” installed in the White House last month, shows U.S. marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African-American girl, into a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 as court-ordered integration met with an angry and defiant response from the white community.
The thrust of the painting is not subtle. America’s vilest racial epithet appears in letters several inches high at the top of the canvas. To the left side, the letters “KKK” are plainly visible. The crowds, mostly women who gathered daily to taunt Bridges as she went to a largely empty school, are not shown in the picture. But the racist graffiti and a splattered tomato convey the hostile atmosphere.
Student Olivia from Cherry Hill wrote this for the website Freedom Heroes:
Ruby had to be walked into school by five federal marshals to make sure that white people wouldn’t try to hurt her. Her mom would walk with her to school, too. White parents took their children out of the school until Ruby stopped going to the white people school. But Ruby did not stop going to the school. Ruby’s teacher was Ms. Barbara Henry. Ms. Henry liked Ruby very much. Ruby was the only child in her class.
Ruby Bridges was born in the South, in New Orleans, La. She is black. She had a great mom and dad. She had three sisters and one brother. Her family loved her so much.
The lesson we learn is it does not matter what color you are. Ruby never gave up. I think she was a brave little girl. Ruby got an education even though people said she couldn’t.
From the Ruby Bridges website, some of her recollections of that momentous day — the courage and spirit of this little girl was astounding:
The morning of November 14 federal marshals drove my mother and me the five blocks to William Frantz. In the car one of the men explained that when we arrived at the school two marshals would walk in front of us an two behind, so we’d be protected on both sides.
That reminded me of what Mama had taught us about God, that he is always there to protect us. “Ruby Nell,” she said as we pulled up to my new school, “don’t be afraid. There might be some people upset outside, but I’ll be with you.”
Sure enough, people shouted and shook their fist when we got out of the car, but to me it wasn’t any noisier than Mardi Gras, I held my mother’s hand and followed the marshals through the crowd, up the steps into the school.
We spent that whole day sitting in the principal’s office. Through the window, I saw white parents pointing at us and yelling, then rushing their children out of the school. In the uproar I never got to my classroom.
The marshals drove my mother and me to school again the next day. I tried not to pay attention to the mob. Someone had a black doll in a coffin, and that scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.
A young white woman met us inside the building. She smiled at me. “Good morning, Ruby Nell,” she said, just like Mama except with what I later learned was a Boston accent. “Welcome, I’m your new teacher, Mrs. Henry.” She seemed nice, but I wasn’t sure how to feel about her. I’d never been taught by a white teacher before.
Mrs. Henry took my mother and me to her second-floor classroom. All the desk were empty and she asked me to choose a seat. I picked one up front, and Mrs. Henry started teaching me the letters of the alphabet.
[...]
At the same time, there were a few white families who braved the protests and kept their children in school. But they weren’t in my class, so I didn’t see them. People from around the country who’d heard about me on the news sent letters and donations. A neighbor gave my dad a job painting houses. Other folks baby-sat for us, watched our house to keep away troublemakers, even walked behind the marshal’s car on my way to school. My family couldn’t have made it without our friends’ and neighbors’ help.
And me, I couldn’t have gotten through that year without Mrs. Henry. Sitting next to her in our classroom, just the two of us, I was able to forget the world outside. She made school fun. We did everything together. I couldn’t go out in the schoolyard for recess, so right in that room we played games and for exercise we did jumping jacks to music.
I remember her explaining integration to me and why some people were against it. “It’s not easy for people to change once they have gotten used to living a certain way,” Mrs. Henry said. “Some of them don’t know any better and they’re afraid. But not everyone is like that.”
Even though I was only six, I knew what she meant. The people I passed every morning as I walked up the schools steps were full of hate. They were white, but so was my teacher, who couldn’t have been more different from them. She was one of the most loving people I had ever known. The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs. Henry’s class was the lesson Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., tried to teach us all. Never judge people by the color of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper. From her window, Mrs. Henry always watched me walk into school. One morning when I got to our classroom, she said she’d been surprised to see me talk to the mob. “I saw your lips moving,” she said, “but I couldn’t make out what you were saying to those people.”
“I wasn’t talking to them,” I told her. “I was praying for them.” Usually I prayed in the car on the way to school, but that day I’d forgotten until I was in the crowd. Please be with me, I’d asked God, and be with those people too. Forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.
“Ruby Nell, you are truly someone special,” Mrs. Henry whispered, giving me an even bigger hug than usual. She had this look on her face like my mother would get when I’d done something to make her proud.
[...]
Neither of us missed a single day of school that year. The crowd outside dwindled to just a few protestors, and before I knew it, it was June. For me, first grade ended much more quietly than it began. I said good-bye to Mrs. Henry, fully expecting her to be my teacher again in the fall.
But when I went back to school in September, everything was different. There were no marshals, no protestors. There were other kids – even some other black students – in my second-grade class. And Mrs. Henry was gone. I was devastated. Years later I found out she hadn’t been invited to return to William Frantz, and she and her husband had moved back to Boston. It was almost as if that first year of school integration had never happened. No one talked about it. Everyone seemed to have put that difficult time behind them.
Time moved on, and little Ruby grew up. After high school, she went to business school and became a travel agent. Later, she returned as an adult volunteer at her old elementary school in New Orleans as a liaison between parents and the school. Years later, a children’s book about Ruby and the school was written and published by the school’s psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Coles. Public interest grew about the little girl in the 1960s Rockwell painting who had been a major part of school integration in the South. Ruby was approached by a reporter:
One of the best parts of the story is that I was finally reunited with my favorite teacher, Barbara Henry. She reached me through the publisher of Dr. Coles’s book, and in 1995 we saw each other in person for the first time in more than three decades. The second she laid eyes on me, she cried, “Ruby Nell!” No one had called me that since I was a little girl. Then we were hugging each other, just like we used to every morning in first grade.
I didn’t realize how much I had picked up from Mrs. Henry (I still have a hard time calling her anything else) – not only her Boston accent, but her mannerism too, such as how she tilts her head and gestures her hands when she talks. She showed me a tiny, dog-eared photo of me with my front teeth missing that she’d kept all these years. “I used to look at that picture and wonder how you were,” she said. “I told my kids about you so often you were like part of my family.”
We have stayed a part of each other’s lives ever since. It turns out that because of what I went through on the front lines of the battle for school integration, people recognize my name and are eager to hear what I have to say about racism and education today. I speak to groups around the country, and when I visit schools, Mrs. Henry often comes with me. We tell kids our story and talk about the lessons of the past and how we can still learn from them today – especially that every child is a unique human being fashioned by God.
Click here to read it in its entirety.
Ruby Bridges, as a child in 1960 being escorted to and from school by U.S. Marshals as she entered the first grade in New Orleans, and as an adult
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