NEW ORLEANS – New Orleans marked the 64th anniversary of the day four Black 6-year-old girls integrated New Orleans schools with a parade — a celebration in stark contrast to the tensions and anger that roiled the city on Nov. 14, 1960.
Federal marshals were needed then to escort Tessie Prevost Williams, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne and Ruby Bridges to school while white mobs opposing desegregation shouted, cursed and threw rocks. Williams, who died in July, walked into McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School that day with Tate and Etienne. Bridges — perhaps the best known of the four, thanks to a Norman Rockwell painting of the scene — braved the abuse to integrate William Frantz Elementary.
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The women now are often referred to as the New Orleans Four.
“I call them America’s little soldier girls,” said Diedra Meredith of the New Orleans Legacy Project, the organization behind the event. "They were civil rights pioneers at 6 years old."
“I was wondering why they were so angry with me," Etienne recalled Thursday. “I was just going to school and I felt like if they could get to me they’d want to kill me — and I definitely didn’t know why at 6 years old.”
Thursday's observance came 70 years after the Supreme Court v. Board of Education decision declaring school segregation by race unconstitutional — in a nation and city where desegregation hopes haven't been fully realized. U.S. schools in recent decades have grown far more diverse and at the same time, by some measures, more segregated, according to an Associated Press analysis earlier this year. Statistics from the nonprofit group New Schools for New Orleans show 92% of the more than 45,000 students enrolled in public schools are students of color.
Still, participants and observers of Thursday's procession were happy to commemorate the bravery of the children and families who first broke the color barrier.
Marching bands in the city's Central Business District prompted workers and customers to walk out of one local restaurant to see what was going on. Tourists were caught by surprise, too.
“We were thrilled to come upon it,” said Sandy Waugh, a visitor from Chestertown, Maryland. “It’s so New Orleans.”
Rosie Bell, a social worker from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, said the parade was a “cherry on top” that she wasn’t expecting Thursday morning.
“I got so lucky to see this,” Bell said.
For Etienne, the parade was her latest chance to celebrate an achievement she couldn't fully appreciate when she was a child.
“What we did opened doors for other people, you know for other students, for other Black students," she said. “I didn’t realize it at the time but as I got older I realized that. ... They said that we rocked the nation for what we had done, you know? And I like hearing when they say that.”
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Associated Press reporter Kevin McGill contributed to this story.