I am ashamed of what white people did to Ruby Bridges
I finished "Travels with Charley" tonight. It ended on a sad note when Steinbeck visited New Orleans during the civil rights movement. I was absolutely appalled at hearing about the Cheerleaders; a group of white trash hags that would convene every morning at William Frantz Elementary School to cruelly heckle an innocent little black girl named Ruby Bridges who was the first to attend an all-white school. She was the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting that I had seen before, but the reality of the scene had never dawned on me. My family didn't raise me with any prejudices toward African Americans, and I always regarded racism as a sport of the ignorant. So I sometimes can't understand the attitude of distrust that's directed at me. I think I need reminders like these that those times when negroes were not considered human are not so distant. Those attitudes are truly inhuman, and shamefully still around-though less popular-today. I'd like to find the graves of those women some day and defile them in the way that they deserve to be remembered.
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