Through My Eyes

In 1960, six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first African American student to attend an all-white school in New Orleans, Louisiana. Federal marshals accompanied this tiny girl so that she could make her way through the crowd of hateful protestors who wanted to block her progress specifically, and integration in general. Although these events reported around the world, Bridges reveals that she was scarcely aware of what was going on. She was so young that she did not even find it particularly unusual that she was the only student in her first-grade class. Her memoir of the time the innocent perspective of her as a child, as well as her adult understanding of the significant role she played in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. Her engrossing narrative is accompanied by news photographs reproduced as browntones.