Through My Eyes

Before she integrated a previously all-white school, Ruby attended a different, all-Black school for kindergarten. She notes that her first school was not only segregated but also far away from her home. She walked to school with the neighborhood children she had played with before they reached school age. She reflects, “I loved school that year” (10). She had Black teachers who encouraged their students.

Late in the school year, the children at her school were asked to take a special test offered by the city school board. The purpose of the test was to “find out which children should be sent to the white schools” in the first cohort of first graders tasked with integration (10-11). She explains that the city’s plan was to start desegregation just in the first grade and proceed each year by integrating each incoming first grade class thereafter.

Bridges recalls taking the bus uptown to take the test “with about a hundred other black kids,” though she does not recall the test’s contents (11). She says that she has since learned that the test was difficult and probably “set up so that kids would have a hard time passing” (11) but Bridges passed along with just a few others.