Through My Eyes

Through My Eyes is the autobiography of Ruby Bridges. In 1960, Bridges became the first African American child to integrate an elementary school in New Orleans, Louisiana following a court mandate for the state to desegregate its public school system. Louisiana trailed segregation effort in neighboring states, such as the nine Black high school students known as the “Little Rock Nine” who integrated a high school in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957.

Bridges’s autobiography, published in 1999, presents her childhood perspective of her elementary school integration. Photographs and excerpts from newspapers, magazines, and other authors who were adults in 1960 adorn the text and offer supplemental facts, figures, and perspectives. Bridges offers her adulthood reflections about the events of that tumultuous school year and its legacy in the last chapter.

The book opens by introducing background context about desegregation efforts in the South during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. The Supreme Court case Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka frames the story because it pertained most directly to education, the main topic of Bridges’s story. The Court found that segregating public schools was unconstitutional, which set off a wave of contentious integration efforts in school districts upholding segregation, particularly in the American South. Bridges notes several times throughout the book that protests continued throughout the schoolyear, fueled by violent racism.

Bridges attended the previously all-white William Frantz Public School in New Orleans as a first grader. She was, for a time, the only Black student in attendance. Her experiences at the school were continually marked by threats from white segregationists who gathered outside of the school and loneliness as the only pupil in her class. White families boycotted William Frantz and the school administration kept Bridges separated from any white classmates who did attend. Bridges recalls positives as well: Eagerness for learning and meaningful connections with allies, for example. Bridges came to understand fundamental lessons about racism at a young age and notes how much she gained and lost during that critical school year.

In this middle-grade book, Bridges reclaims her narrative, which has become so famous and inspirational to Americans and people around the world in ongoing struggles for racial justice. She says that she has come to understand her childhood as an adult after consuming others’ interpretation of her story through her adolescence. She wants her story to be inspirational and she closes the book by discussing the Ruby Bridges Foundation, which promotes racial justice and launches improvement efforts such as multicultural arts programs at inner-city schools in need. The first school she partnered with was her alma mater, William Frantz Public School.

The book contains racist slurs within quotations to accurately depict the hatred that Bridges and other African Americans faced from white segregationists in the time period in question. There is also occasional usage of the word “Negroes” to describe Black historical figures. As Bridges explains, this is a period-specific word, used by Black and white commentators during the Civil Rights Movement. It was not intended to be derogatory. The word has since fallen out of regular usage and is largely considered a slur in modern conversation.