Armed Federal Marshals escorted 6-year-old Ruby Bridges through a belligerent crowd into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, La., on Nov. 14, 1960.
She was the first African-American child to attend an all-white school in the South, one of the few who volunteered to enact school integration after Brown v. the Board of Education.
The celebrated event in civil rights history is commemorated by Norman Rockwell’s famous 1964 painting, “The Problem We All Live With.” The painting will be on display until Feb. 5 at the Dayton Art Institute, along with a collection of Rockwell’s work on loan from the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts.
In collaboration with the exhibit, Ruby Bridges will be speaking at the NCR Renaissance Auditorium at the Dayton Art Institute at 7 p.m. on Jan. 19, and will be signing books afterward.
The organizers hope that the event will be a formative learning experience for students.
“Here’s a little girl who’s very brave, in a way that young people, that maybe all of us, may not understand,” says Professor David Bodary, one of the Visiting Scholar organizers. “I’m not sure that we’re asked to be brave in the way that she was asked to be brave.”
The John N. and Connie Taylor Endowment for Visiting Scholars will be providing free tickets for Sinclair students interested in attending the speaking event and exhibit, according to Bodary. Fewer than 500 tickets are available for the Bridges talk and more than 200 tickets have been reserved for Sinclair participants.
Sinclair’s tickets to see Bridges speak are the last available, as the Dayton Art Institute has already sold out of tickets for the general public. The remaining tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and are expected to sell out quickly.
Students are encouraged to view the Rockwell exhibit at the Dayton Art Institute from 6 to 7 p.m., before the Bridges talk. The group will be coordinating shuttle rides from the Sinclair campus to the art museum and speaking venue.
Students can view the event schedule and add themselves to the ticket reservation list at http://www.sinclair.edu/about/learning/slearning/dai/dai_reg/index.cfm. After making a reservation, a Sinclair student ID is sufficient to gain access to the exhibit and auditorium.
“Education is something that we do actively, not passively,” Bodary says. “That’s why we’re making these opportunities available, so people will participate and become involved…we end up being a different person as a result of these experiences.”