PARADISE VALLEY - Lucille Bridges recalled telling her daughter Ruby to pray
as her then 6-year-old, flanked by U.S. marshals, became the first black
student in New Orleans to enter an all-white school.
"I taught her to pray and that's what happened. You just have to pray and be
strong," Bridges said.
It was November 1960 and Louisiana was under a federal order to integrate.
As a young mother, Lucille Bridges said she wanted her children to have a
good education, something she did not have as a sharecropper picking cotton
and corn while growing up.
"I just prayed and asked God please when I got married I wanted to make it
better," she said.
Ruby was the oldest of Bridges' children and rather than travel 5 or 6 miles
to a segregated school, Bridges wanted her daughter to attend William Frantz
Public School, which was within walking distance of their home.
Bridges, 74, said her faith in God kept her going as whites protested and
refused to send their children to integrated schools with Ruby and other
Black children. In fact, her daughter was the only student in her
first-grade class.
Artist Norman Rockwell immortalized Ruby in a painting titled "The Problem
We All Live With."
Nearly 50 years later, Lucille Bridges is grateful for how history played
out and that diversity is celebrated, rather than feared.
"If I had to do this all over again, I would do it again," she said.
On Monday, Bridges received the Diversity Champion Award at the 10th annual
Paradise Valley Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration.
"I want to thank each and everybody for just inviting me here and each and
everyone for the award. It makes me feel so great," she said.
Bridges had to evacuate New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. She now
lives in Houston, but has a daughter, Mary, who lives in the Valley and is
employed with Scottsdale Healthcare. Bridges also has friends at Paradise
Valley United Methodist Church.The mother of 8 has 35 grandchildren.
She was asked if the world is a better place for her grandchildren. She said
it is because everybody works together today.
"I believe it is much, much better," she said.
Paradise Valley's Baha'i community organizes the Paradise Valley MLK event.
The event's theme this year was Face of Diversity.
Dr. Farshad Agahi, the event's master of ceremony, said the very basis upon
which the Baha'i faith was founded are those things that King lived and died
for, including unity of all people, peace for a whole world, and elimination
of racial and all forms of prejudice.
"Because we are all one, the human race," Agahi said.
Hessam Rahimian and Puneh Ghebleh co-chaired the event.
Others honored Monday included Riley Roberts, a senior at Chaparral High
School; Paradise Valley Police Chief John Wintersteen, the town's liaison
for the event, and the Town Council.
The Kawambe-Omowale African Drum & Dance Theatre performed at the ceremony.