On November 14, 1960, a six-year-old named Ruby Bridges walked into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans escorted by U.S. marshals. She was the first Black child to enter an all-white school in the South. People threw objects at her. One woman held up a Black doll in a little wooden coffin. Many white parents kept their kids home, so Ruby spent first grade alone with her teacher, Barbara Henry, a white woman from Boston. Ruby ate her own lunch from home because of fear of poisoning, and her mother lost her job. Through all of it, Ruby never missed a day of school. Years later she said of her teacher, “She showed me her heart.”
