Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges by Ruby Bridges Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Through My Eyes: Ruby Bridges
Book Review: A great book
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was great; it was about Ruby Briggs experience being one of the first colored children to integrate the elementary schools in the south. It gives a wonderful perspective about how this young girl viewed racism. It also shows the reader that she did not completely understand why some many people were mean to her. It is an extreme eye opener to how strong racism was in the south, at one point it talks about grown women throwing and yelling at Ruby.Book Review: A moving history in photos and in Ruby's own words.
Summary: 5 Stars
A beautiful, moving book that captures the intensity of the south in the early 1960's. Sepia photos and Ruby's own words enable the reader to walk with her as she enters first grade in New Orleans: the first black student in an all-white school in 1961. Ruby's recollections of that year and her present-day thoughts about her early life are honest and memorable. This book will make for great reading for early adolescents and will be an important addition to classroom and library collections.Book Review: A must-read for everyone
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is another reminder of the battles waged and obstacles faced by ordinary people during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. For those of us who were not there it really is difficult to imagine the intensity of the hatred that so many whites felt. It is disturbing to read of the vicious threats made and the horrible venom spewed at this little girl by adults who should have known better.Book Review: An important story!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a heart-wrenching story of a courageous little girl. These pages contain a story that should be included in every classroom library. It is a part of American history we must all be knowledgeable of and never forget. The pictures of this delightful sixyear old are wonderful. At the same time the frightening pictures of the protesters are difficult to look at and deal with the emotions they conjure up. This book is a great way to not only introduce a history lesson but also how segregation still exits today in our schools.Book Review: Courage
Summary: 5 Stars
Parents always try to protect their children from the worst the world has to offer, and Ruby Bridges' parents did too. An African-American child in the deep South, she was nevertheless unaware of the hatred swirling around her, either in Tylertown Mississippi, where she was born in 1954, or in New Orleans, where her family moved in 1958. Her grandparents were all Mississippi sharecroppers, renting the land they worked with a portion of the cotton and other crops they grew, and struggling to live off the rest. But Ruby spent sheltered summers visiting her grandparents' farms, where she helped to pick and can the beans, cucumbers and other vegetables they grew on two acres reserved to feed the extended family. And at home in New Orleans, her safe and comfortable world of family, jacks, jump rope, tree-climbing, softball--and deep respect for God and her parents--existed entirely on her family's block, only one block away from a white neighborhood. Then in the summer of 1960, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) contacted Ruby's parents. The Federal court planned to force two white New Orleans schools to admit African-American children. Ruby was one of only a handful of black children who had been tested for admission to these schools, and passed. She was to attend the William Frantz Public School. Her father, Abon Bridges, was opposed to her going; he had fought in a segregated unit in the Korean War, and believed nothing would ever change. Her mother, Lucille, thought otherwise and convinced him to take the risk.
Ruby started the year in her old school while Louisiana Governor Jimmie H. Davis led legislators in Baton Rouge in a fight to preserve segregation. They passed 28 new anti-integration laws and attempted to seize the public school system. Meanwhile Federal District Court Judge J. Skelly Wright upheld Federal laws requiring equal opportunity. Ruby was the only black child sent to William Frantz Public School, however. Another three students were to go to McDonough.
The morning that Federal Marshals arrived to take Ruby to her new school, she only knew only that she was to start a new school, and was not afraid. The policemen at the school door made her think this was an important place. "It must be college," she thought. She sat in the principal's office with her mother all day, and became frightened only when, as she left the school, she saw the crowds of white anti-integration protestors.
The next day, Ruby joined a class with a white teacher named Barbara Henry, whose kindness rose above the fray. No other children joined the class, and within a few days, Ruby was going to school alone with the Marshals; her mother had to return to work. Then the Rev. Lloyd Foreman broke ranks with the white boycotts and sent his daughter Pam to school. The Ku Klux clan began burning crosses in black neighborhoods to frighten the people into giving up their fight for equality. The tension in New Orleans grew each day.
But Ruby quickly became a symbol of freedom, appearing in John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley and a Norman Rockwell painting than ran in Look Magazine. When Abon Bridges lost his job at a local filling station for sending Ruby to a white school, the family began to receive gifts and money from all over the U.S. Even former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Ruby.
Some children might cower in fear after such experiences, refuse to go on. Ruby persevered, however, as did her upright family. As a child, she believed that prayer could get her through anything. And it accomplished a great deal.
While she was unable to attend college, Ruby married and raised four sons. Over another 16 pages, Ruby Bridges tells about her subsequent experiences, her contributions and efforts, what she has learned and given.
This historic story of courage and wisdom is worth its weight in gold for the hope it offers readers of all ages. Alyssa A. Lappen