Lucille Bridges, the mother of civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, has died at the age of 86 on November 10, 2020. In 1960, Bridges walked with her then-6-year-old daughter past crowds of screaming white racist when her daughter became the first to integrate all-white New Orleans elementary schools.
Lucille was born on August 12, 1934 to Mississippi sharecroppers at a time when Black children rarely went beyond the 3rd grade. Her family later moved to New Orleans. She gave birth to Ruby in 1954, the same year as the landmark Supreme Court case Brown vs. Board of Education, which struck down the decades-old "separate but equal" doctrine, ending segregation in the schools.
Her daughter went on to become an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, memorialized in Norman Rockwell’s famous painting “The Problem We All Live With” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a statement Tuesday night that Lucille Bridges is "one of the mothers of the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans." She said the city mourns her loss.