Valerie Walker - Ruby Bridges’ Influence

 

Okay. So, sometimes history has a way of speaking directly to your heart. It can leave a mark, an indelible etch in who you are that can change who you are without. It can manifest into a thought, an idea or a way of being that you wouldn't have been, if you hadn't had that moment. And Ruby Bridges made a mark with me. In 1960, at the age of six, Ruby Bridges desegregated a public elementary school in Louisiana, all by herself. I first heard about her when my fourth-grade teacher read her story out loud in class, and I was fascinated by her. I was in awe of her bravery, in the strength, like in the face of such danger. US Marshals were called in to escort her safely to and from school. Her act was deemed so dangerous. And I also was struck by her determination.

 

The other parents of the students that would have been in her class refused to let their kids come to school and be educated with a negro. So, she spent much of that first year by herself. And I could relate, because almost two decades later, I was the only black kid in my academically accelerated class. And like Ruby learned, I learned. I loved to learn and I thirsted to learn more. So, it's no big surprise that I became a teacher, thank you, teaching young black and brown minds in Brooklyn. And even then, Ruby was with me, because every year in my classroom hung a poster of the portrait that was painted of her by Norman Rockwell called The Problem We All Live With. It depicted Ruby on that fateful first day, so small amongst the long legs of the marshals. I used it to springboard a discussion with my students about the difference between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. 

 

Fast forward to June 2019, I have moved toward social justice and now work with youth in detention, think jail for adolescents, the hardest to reach of the hardest to reach. I get it, because it's hard to have hope behind bars. I had attended a week-long training in a literacy program that was funded or its foundation was in the freedom school movement. It was a long week, intense and vibrant, I could see how the training would help my kids, but it was 12-hour days with more homework added in. I had very little sleep, so I was feeling overwhelmed and hopeless.

 

It was the last day of the program and they had a closing ceremony, and I was hangry and tired and just wanted to go home. I sat slumped in my chair with about 3,000 other people in much the same condition. Suddenly, I thought I heard the moderator say “Ruby Bridges.” And it hit me like a jolt. I sat up in my seat, “Ruby Bridges? Excuse me, did they just say Ruby?” [audience laughter] And so, I reached down and grabbed a discarded program from the floor and I looked and I found that, “Oh my God, it was my Ruby Bridges.” And immediately, my eyes welled up with tears and they began to fall. She came out onto the stage and she looked so young that my first thought really was, “Damn, Black really don't crack.” [audience laughter]

 

And then, she spoke so eloquently, not of what she had endured, although she added more information. Behind the car that the US Marshals used to drive Ruby to school marched every Black member of her town. How beautiful an image that was? But she didn't speak more of that, because sadly, many of the younger kids in the audience didn't know who she was. But instead, she connected to them by exalting the amazing freedoms today that we have to create change, and she challenged them to do just that as a way to pay it forward. When she was done, the moderator said that there would be time for one or two questions, and I shot out of my chair like a bullet, hand raised high in the air on my tippy toes.

 

I was so intent, my focus so single minded to talk to my hero, that I did not even realize that I had begun to chant breathlessly, “Pick me, pick me, pick me,” [audience laughter] until I began to notice that the people sitting around me started pointing to me and saying, “Pick her.” [audience laughter] And they picked me. [chuckles] As I walked to the mic, I was transformed back into my nine-year-old self, when I'd first heard about her. I don't remember what the first person asked or what she answered, but I do remember that when it was my turn, she looked very kindly at me and I thanked her for her act of defiance that directly led to my ability to graduate from an Ivy League institution.

 

I thanked her and told her what an inspiration she had been to my life and what role she had played in my classroom. And then, I asked her the questions I had been burning to ask her since forever. “Was the white woman that taught you kind to you? And did you love having the teacher all to yourself?” Because I was a super nerd and to me that sounded like Nirvana. [audience laughter]. And she answered in the affirmative to both. But then she went on to thank me and tell me that I was an inspiration to her. Now, you know, I don't remember what else happened, because [chuckles] I passed out on the spot. 

 

However, I do remember the feeling. I remember thinking of the kids that I work with back in Brooklyn and wanting to know how I could convey this feeling to them, this joy, this energy, this ability to speak to history and make another mark. I just knew that I was energized in that moment, no longer tired and I was ready. Thank you.