Read on Twitter
60 years ago this week, on November 14, 1960, four Black first graders in New Orleans desegregated two elementary schools in the Lower Ninth Ward. #RubyBridges began to attend William Frantz Elementary School, and Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost, and Leona Tate attended McDonogh 19.
Ruby was the only Black child at Frantz. Only one teacher taught her. She was the only student in her class, segregated from her white peers. At McDonogh 19, segregationists organized a white boycott, "Operation Out", and within a week, not a single white student remained.
Two days after this token school integration, thousands of segregationists, among them many women, swept through parts of the French Quarter and the Central Business and Warehouse Districts. They vandalized stores, attacked Black people in the vicinity, and stormed city hall.
A number of protesting women made a name for themselves through their actions: "The Cheerleaders," a group of vulgarly racist, incessantly belligerent, and physically violent white supremacist women who terrorized the Black schoolchildren and physically attacked moderate whites.
The Cheerleaders threatend to kill six-year-old Ruby, staged mock lynchings, and drove a number of white families who had still sent their children to Frantz (and later McDonogh again) out of the city through constant violent harassment. Many Cheerleaders were neighborhood women.
There is a whole story to tell about their emergence, backgrounds, methods, and media portrayals. They were self-conscious white supremacist actors who put on outrageous performances to keep the crisis alive. I write about them in my book (shameless self-promotion, I know...):
More importantly: These women terrorized small children and their parents because they were racist street fighters who fought against fundamental human rights for Black people. These women were not observers, bystanders or victims, they were hardline white supremacist activists.
Ruby Bridges, Gail Etienne, Tessie Prevost, and Leona Tate prevailed. They were incredibly brave in the face of the white supremacist hatred and violence. These girls' (now women's) stories are incredible. Ruby Bridges has published a new memoir today, called "This Is Your Time."
It is also important to tell the story of the white supremacist, "ordinary" people who organized a massive grassroots movement in New Orleans (and adjacent parishes) to circumvent the Brown decision and the Black Freedom Struggle's progress. This story includes many white women.
White supremacist women often used maternalism as a strategy to legitimize their public presence, but they expanded their agitation and actions beyond that. It is important that #Twitterstorians talk about this, also because it is mirrored in many a right-wing organization today.
A quick addition: The white men in the first picture are US marshals who accompanied Ruby, day in and day out. The Cheerleaders taunted these federal marshals as "nursemaids" and mocked their supposed lack of masculinity. That was part of their white supremacist gender politics.
A final note, though: many more "respectable" segregationists were quick to label these predominantly working-class women "white trash," while they evaded the desegregation of their children's schools in upper class, residentially segregated neighborhoods. That's important, too.
And now an actual final note, I promise: I write about this women's group's name, "The Cheerleaders," too. It is a testament to the theatrical quality of their protests, but it also shows the sexist prism through which they were seen, which downplayed and belittled their actions.
Wow. Thank you, everyone, for your feedback and for sharing. It's so important to tell these stories. If you'd like to know more, check out Elizabeth McRae's & Karen Anderson's work and, if you'll forgive my shameless plug, my forthcoming book at @UGAPress. You can pre-order it.
...and here is the link to pre-order the book. Thank you so much, everybody! https://ugapress.org/book/9780820358628/massive-resistance-and-southern-womanhood/
Lucille Bridges, a civil rights activist and Ruby Bridges's mother, passed away yesterday at the age of 86. RIP. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/11/933854762/lucille-bridges-mother-of-anti-segregation-icon-ruby-bridges-dies-at-86
