Description
What our Biographies: Ruby Bridges lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Biographies: Ruby Bridges is a high-interest reading comprehension lesson plan. As such, students will practice various close reading and comprehension skills. In addition, they will learn more about this significant historical figure and her influence on American history. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page provides an extra paragraph of information to help guide the lesson. It explains that you can teach this lesson in a whole-class setting or as an independent, small-group activity. You can use the blank lines to write down any other ideas or thoughts you have about the topic as you prepare.
BIOGRAPHIES: RUBY BRIDGES LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Disparity in American Society
The Biographies: Ruby Bridges lesson plan contains three pages of content. Ruby Bridges’ story started before she was even born. In May of
1954, the Supreme Court made a big decision in the Brown vs. Board of Education case. They decided that separating schools by race (segregation) was wrong and unfair. This decision replaced an old rule from 1896 that said it was okay to have separate schools for Black and white children as long as they were equal. But in reality, schools for Black kids weren’t as good as schools for white kids.
The world Ruby was born into was very different from today. Black children and kids from other minority groups faced lots of unfair treatment, including going to different schools. But these schools didn’t have as much money, good equipment, or safety. Many minority kids only went to school for a few days each week. Back then, only about one of every ten Black students graduated from high school. Their classrooms were often crowded, with kids of different ages and grades mixed together.
The disparity in services and poor conditions of the schools led civil rights leaders to encourage African American children to attempt to attend all-white schools. This was meant to provoke legal battles in order to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in the Brown vs. Board of Education case. By 1960, when Ruby Bridges was ready to attend school, not much had changed. Some historians claim that things actually got worse! Even though the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was not legal, nearly all school systems continued to circumvent the law and remained segregated.
Minority schools were not in good shape. The roofs leaked, the floors sagged, there was no heat during the winter, and windows had no glass. The books were old and worn out. African American children went to the overcrowded schools with too many students for each teacher. On their way to school, they were often bullied by white students and adults who didn’t want them at their schools. This was how things were in 1960 when Ruby Bridges, a young Black girl, made history by attending a school that was exclusive to white children.
Background of Ruby Bridges
Ruby was born on September 8, 1954, just a few months after the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Her parents, Ebon and Lucille, lived in the southern city of Tylertown, Mississippi. Ebon was a veteran of the Korean War and an experienced mechanic. Lucille worked as a housekeeper. Neither parent graduated from high school. Lucille even had to leave school to help her family work in the fields.
Life as a sharecropper was hard and didn’t offer many educational opportunities. So, when Ruby was four years old, her parents decided to move to New Orleans, where there were more jobs and a brighter future. Ebon was able to find employment as a gas station attendant and mechanic. Lucille worked as a domestic housekeeper—mostly at night—to care for Ruby and her siblings (two brothers and one sister). While life in New Orleans was better, the family faced difficult times. Discrimination and racism were still a very prevalent factor in their daily lives.
No one could imagine what was to happen next for the Bridges! Lucille wanted her children to get the best education possible. Every day, Ruby walked past an all-white school on her way to the all-Black school. Even though the all-white school was closer, she had to go to a school farther away. This was despite a law that said schools should be for everyone, regardless of skin color. How did the school system evade the law?
Passing the Test
To keep the schools separate, the school system made minority students take a special test to see if they could go to the white school. White students didn’t have to take this test. The test was really hard, and it was meant to keep students who were not white out of white schools. Lucille was convinced Ruby would have better educational opportunities at an all-white school. She pressed her husband to allow their young daughter to be tested. Ebon was concerned that there would be trouble if she passed the test and attempted to go to the all-white school. With Lucille’s encouragement, however, Ebon changed his mind. Ruby took the test, and the NAACP notified her parents that she was one of six students who passed.
Sadly, Ruby was alone. The other five students decided not to attend the all-white school. Lucille was convinced attending the school was in Ruby’s best interest and refused to allow others to convince her otherwise. Ruby became the first African American child to attend an all-white elementary school in the South.
Passing the test was the least of Ruby’s challenges. She still wasn’t attending William Frantz School at the beginning of September. The Louisiana State Legislature was fighting in federal courts and refused to allow black students into white schools. But after all the appeals failed, they had no choice but to integrate the schools. However, Ruby’s struggles had just begun! She faced horrible taunting, hatred, and threats from people trying to scare her away from William Frantz School.
Fearing for Ruby and her family, a federal judge asked the government for protection. On November 14, 1960, US Marshalls drove her and her family to the school. When they arrived, a huge crowd had gathered to scare her away. Two federal marshals walked in front of her and two behind her, protecting her from the hateful crowd. She spent her first day in the principal’s office as all the white parents kept their children home, protesting her admission to the school.
Barbara Henry
Day two was tough for Ruby as well. People protested, yelled mean things, and made threats as she walked into the school. It looked like she wouldn’t be able to learn because no teacher wanted to teach her. But then, a new teacher at the school named Barbara Henry agreed to teach her. Ruby was the only student in Mrs. Henry’s class because the other parents wouldn’t let their children learn with her.
As the days passed into weeks, she and her family continued to face racist taunting and threats to their lives. One parent threatened to poison Ruby, while others threatened to harm her family. Each day, federal marshals escorted her to school and protected her while she was in class. She and Mrs. Henry were the only two people in Mrs. Henry’s classroom for a year. At home, Lucille encouraged Ruby to pray for the crowds even though they shouted obscenities at her as she entered the school. Ruby later said that prayer gave her courage!
A Change in Society
By the end of the first year, things began to settle slightly at the school. Ruby still faced racial taunts and threats, but they seemed less than the first few days. By the second year, it appeared the community wanted to move on from the ugliness of her first day at school. Mrs. Henry’s contract wasn’t renewed, and she moved back to Boston. The federal marshals who escorted and protected Ruby during the first year were no longer at the school. A few white parents sent their children to the second grade at the school, but most did not have anything to do with Ruby—she was ostracized and alone in the classroom.
November 14, 1960, was a pivotal day in the struggle and battle for Civil Rights. And while the battle began that day, it was nowhere near victory. It would not be until the late 1970s and early 1980s that integration in public schools would near completion. But Ruby Bridges played a critical role. Her courage forever changed education and society in America. It brought the public a new awareness of the struggles that result from racism, prejudice, and inequality.
BIOGRAPHIES: RUBY BRIDGES LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Biographies: Ruby Bridges lesson plan includes two worksheets: an activity worksheet and a practice worksheet. Each one will help students solidify their grasp of the material they learned throughout the lesson. You can refer to the classroom procedure guidelines to know when to hand out each worksheet.
PRIMARY SOURCES ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity, students will read two quotes, one from Ruby Bridges and the other from her schoolteacher, Barbara Henry. They will use the source and the Five W’s to explain what these two women meant in their quotes. The template is on the second activity page.
BIOGRAPHIES: RUBY BRIDGES REVIEW PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet requires students to answer a series of 10 questions. These questions all relate to the content pages, so students will need to refer to them often for the answers. In addition, each question provides which reading tool the question corresponds to, such as text feature, vocabulary, or comprehension.
Worksheet Answer Keys
At the end of the lesson plan document is an answer key for the practice worksheet. The correct answers are all in red to make it easier for you to compare them with students’ responses. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
