Abigail Gossett once said, "The problem with history as it is taught in our schools is this – it is dry facts and figures. There is no self, no emotional connection. When you see an army in a history book, you see a thing… a machine with thousands, if not millions of little parts. Perhaps it’s time we changed the way we write the history books. Maybe that personal understanding of what it was like is what it would take to foster a craving to learn and not repeat the errors of before."
I feel the same way when I reflect on something so monumental as Ruby Bridges in this picture. She was only six years old during the American Civil Rights struggle in the early 1960s when she became the first African-American child to attend an all-white school in the South. For this, she had to live with threats to her life on a daily basis and face teachers unwilling to instruct her. She is captured for all eternity in Norman Rockwell’s famous painting; he depicted her on her first day of school, surrounded by U.S. marshals as a result of the court-ordered desegregation of public schools in New Orleans. Going to kindergarten with the federal law enforcement agency at your side: This was her reality.
Rosa sat... so Ruby could learn. Ruby learned... so Martin could march.
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