Increasingly, the US civil rights icon Ruby Bridges – the first Black child to integrate a school in Louisiana – has seen some adults seek to prevent grade-school students from accessing the books and films that chronicle her story, saying the tale makes white children feel bad about themselves.
But that justification is “ridiculous” because “my biggest fans are kids all around the world”, Bridges told NBC’s Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview airing on Sunday morning’s episode of the show.
“All of the letters, all of the mail, I have little girls from all walks of life, different nationalities that dress up like Ruby Bridges,” the now 69-year-old activist said in an excerpt of the interview that NBC shared in advance with the Guardian.
“I found through … traveling that they resonate with the loneliness, probably the pain that I felt. There’s all sorts of reasons that they are drawn to my story. So I would have to disagree [that it makes certain children feel guilty].”
Delivered in a recurring segment known as Meet the Moment, which aims to spotlight people who influence political issues outside Washington, Bridges’ remarks to Welker come a little more than a year after one parent’s complaint prompted a school in Florida to stop showing its students a 1988 made-for-TV movie about her.
The parent in question complained that the movie – which some schools usually show to students during Black History Month in February – might teach children that “white people hate Black people”.
Separately, Bridges’ autobiographical picture book I Am Ruby Bridges was included in a collection of 64 “diverse” titles from Scholastic Books – the US’s largest children’s book publisher – that librarians are allowed to opt out of for popular book fairs that Scholastic helps stage at campuses nationwide.
Scholastic defended itself by saying it had been forced into that position to shield teachers and librarians in largely conservative regions which may have enacted prohibitions against children’s books addressing race, gender and sexuality.
Other works by Bridges have also been targeted by book bans schemed up by groups such as Moms for Liberty.
In her conversation with Welker, Bridges dismissed the idea that her experience could unduly make white children uncomfortable.
“That’s just an excuse not to share the truth, to cover up history,” Bridges said. “But I believe that history is sacred – that none of us should have the right to change or alter history in any way.”
Bridges was six years old in November 1960 when US deputy marshals escorted her past jeering crowds into New Orleans’ William Frantz elementary school.
With her white sweater, matching hair bow, black patent leather shoes and a small satchel in her right hand that day, she became the first Black child to desegregate an all-white elementary school in New Orleans – a scene immortalized in the 1963 Norman Rockwell painting named The Problem We All Live With.
Bridges told Welker that her parents never explained to her what she would confront that historic day when she went to school. She said she naively believed she was headed to participate in one of the Carnival parades for which New Orleans is internationally known.
“I often say what protected me was the innocence of a child,” Bridges said to Welker. “I thought that day I was venturing into a Mardi Gras parade. So I wasn’t afraid.”
Bridges grew up to start an eponymous foundation dedicated to promoting tolerance and change through academic education. Meanwhile, the Akili Academy now occupying the campus which Bridges integrated has a majority Black student population and is a stop on Louisiana’s Civil Rights Trail.