Ruby Bridges (1998)

The dramatic story begins with Dr. Broyard (Peter Francis James) of the NAACP who was so impressed by Ruby’s test scores after kindergarten that he visits the Bridges’ with the proposal that their bright daughter be one of the students to integrate William Frantz Elementary School. Her father Abon (Michael Beach) is not so sure about the proposal, but her mother Lucielle ‘Lucy’ Bridges (Leia Rochon) readily agrees, as does little Ruby (Chaz Monet).

The next day four Federal Marshalls show up to escort mother and daughter to the school. They are definitely needed, the hate-filled crowd, carrying signs with racial slurs, chanting, “2-4-6-8, We don’t want to integrate.” This is the most frightful part of the film, the vicious crowd showing up every day that Ruby attends school to spew their venom. Especially scary to the little girl is the nasty woman holding up a small coffin with a presumably dead black doll within it. This gives rise to the fear of poisoning so that Ruby never is allowed to eat in the school cafeteria. She will be relegated to her classroom to eat alone with the lunch prepared by her mother.

The first day of school mother and daughter spend the day sitting in the school office surrounded by hostile staff. If looks could kill! The head of staff Miss Woodmere (Diane Scarwid) makes no attempt to cover up her distaste of the black girl’s presence. And I write the singular “girl” because the other three black children have made other plans, leaving Ruby as the one intruder in the all white school.

All the mothers of the children that would have been in Ruby’s first grade class angrily withdraw their children. The White teachers refuse to accept a “colored” pupil. Fortunately for Ruby, newcomer Mrs. Henry (Penelope Ann Miller), from Boston, says she has no problem teaching just one student. After a few days Lucielle must return to work, leaving her daughter to the kind teacher’s care. The two get along well, Mrs. Henry discovering how bright her sole pupil is and defending her against Miss Woodmere’s denigration of her when the little girl achieves all “As” on her tests. When her complaint that Ruby needs art and physical education fall on deaf ears, she even leads her little charge in physical education exercises.

Ruby also receives help from Dr. Robert Coles (Kevin Pollak), a psychiatrist who has worked with children facing stress. When his attempts to contact Ruby are rebuffed by Miss Woodmere, he persists, finally visiting the family, through the good offices of NAACP President Dr. Broyard, to offer his help. Again, Abon  is not interested, but later, when Ruby acts bizarrely with her doll, Lucielle apparently convinces her husband to change his mind. There begins a series of sessions in which Cole asks the little girl to draw her school and family. Eventually he sees that she draws the Negroes without an arm or a mouth and her family with pink skin and “whole,” thus indicating internal problems. Another problem is the girl’s lack of appetite displayed at suppertime when she cannot be coaxed to eat. Unseen by any is the girl’s practice at lunchtime of disposing of her lunch in a cabinet. Cole is also is puzzled by her persistence in returning each day to face the hatred of the crowd and the shunning of most of the staff and students. By what means is she coping?

The latter we understand first from what we are shown of the family’s religious life. Early on we see them in a joyful church scene where the pastor preaches a relevant social gospel, declaring, “We are a people under fire.” There are several scenes in which Lucielle talks with her daughter, connecting Jesus with what Ruby is going through by telling her, “Jesus faced a mob too, just like you. You know what he did? He prayed for them.” And then she goes on to quote from the Beatitudes, “Blessed are you when you are persecuted…” In another scene the scared girl late at night comes to her mother because she is thinking of the hateful crowd, and her mother tells her to pray. She gets out of bed to look in on the girl, who is on her knees beside her bed praying.

How well the little girl ingests her mother’s words of faith we see in two scenes. In the first Ruby again is being ushered through the angry demonstrators when she stops, turns and walks down the steps, back toward the demonstrators. (I just noticed that in their case “demon” at the beginning of the longer word is appropriate!) She utters some words, but we cannot hear them. Dr. Cole is in the crowd, and he is worried that she has given in to resentment or rage.

In their next session the following exchange takes place:

Dr. Robert Coles:  Honey, I saw you talking to them. Did you finally get angry with them? Did you tell them to just leave you alone?

Ruby Nell Bridges: No, I didn’t tell them anything. I didn’t talk to them.

Dr. Coles: I was there; I saw your lips movie

Ruby : But I wasn’t talking to them. I was praying for them

Dr. Coles: Praying for them?

Ruby: Yes, I pray for them every day in the car. But I forgot that day.

Dr. Coles: Oh. What prayer did you say?

Ruby : Please, God, forgive these people because even if they say those mean things they don’t know what they’re doing. So, You can forgive them just like You did  those folks a long time ago when they said terrible things about You.

Wow! Talk about “a little child shall lead them”! And that, in effect is what Cole means when he says several times that she has taught him. He has found the answer to the question of what has pulled her through, the strong faith imparted by her mother and community.

In addition to such powerful scenes involving Ruby, one that moved me deeply and which added depth to the depiction of her father is the one between him and his wife. All through the film he has been skeptical and reluctant to subject their Ruby to what amounts to a wrenching social experiment. More than once he declares “that integration does not work.” Returning home and revealing that he has been fired from his job because of Ruby, he describes his life as a soldier in Korea where he was treated by white officers like dirt. He received no respect and was given the dirtiest tasks to perform. Lucielle offers him the same sympathetic support she has given their daughter, assuring him in effect that God would make things turn out right.

Things do begin to change. A Methodist minister brings his son back to the school, even though the crowd yells that he is a traitor. Another child on his own runs up the school steps despite his mother’s call to come back. The hostility of fellow teacher Miss Spencer (Patrika Darbo) slowly melts beneath the warmth of Mrs. Henry. She declares out loud that the latter is a good teacher and agrees that the first graders in her 2nd grade class can sit in part of the time with Ruby. The white children at first reflect the prejudice of their parents, but this is eroded by Ruby’s graceful charm and the encouragement of Mrs. Henry. By the end of the film there is hope—we see the white boy smiling with Ruby as they sit together on the schoolyard merry-go-round—though we know it was just the end of 1960 (or early 1961) and that there was yet a long road filled with grief still ahead for those striving to overcome racial barriers.