Through My Eyes By Ruby Ridges

In the memoir Through My Eyes by Ruby Ridges, the author writes about her personal perspective of attending William Frantz, an all-white public school, by herself. At the age of six, Ruby overcame many obstacles every day, all for her education. She shares her experiences starting as early as taking a test to be chosen for the public school, and throughout, tells the story of how she became the girl who changed segregation in schools forever. Ruby Bridges uses her first-person account to deepen the readers’ understanding of this moment in U.S. history and allows readers to fully grasp what her life was like when transitioning to an all-white school. Ruby expounded her account of being tested by herself in order to integrate schools. She wrote,

Bridges said that she walked up to the school building and claimed to have seen, “barricades and people shouting and policemen everywhere. I thought maybe it was Mardi Gras…” This quote is implying the innocence of Ruby and how she believed the protestors to be celebrating the carnival, Mardi Gras. Ruby was naive about what was going on around her and to her, this situation was positive. In other words, Ruby wasn’t told why the people were there behind barricades, so she inferred that they were there for something that wasn’t wrong, which was sadly not the case. This matters because it suggests that Ruby knew nothing more than just the fact that lots of people were gathered around, and that they were there to shame her. She wasn’t fully aware of what was going on, making her

She remarks, “Their favorite was Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “Glory, glory, segregation, the South will rise again…but most of all I remember seeing a black doll in a coffin, which frightened me more than anything else.” Readers are able to understand that this is what Ruby heard and saw when going to school. It means that people were singing cruel songs to signify their strong feelings for keeping segregation. This matters because it just shows how far some protestors took the integration between schools and that people were going out of their way to show harm to Ruby. Clearly, most of these dissidents were unhappy with Ruby attending William Frantz, and they took it to the next level of putting a doll inside of a coffin, which was a sign of Ruby being dead. Ruby went through so much, and the hymn and doll were just two of the many different things she was shown. After reading this quote, it’s comprehensible to see that Ruby is starting to not ignore all of these hateful actions and she is now understanding more of her