She was the first African American child to attend formerly whites -only William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis on November 14, Bridges was the eldest of five children born to Abon and Lucille Bridges. In , when she was six years old, her parents responded to a request from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAACP and volunteered her to participate in the integration of the New Orleans school system, even though her father was hesitant.
Bridges was born during the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. Brown v. Board of Education was decided three months and twenty-two days before Bridges's birth. Though the Brown v. Board of Education decision was finalized in , southern states were extremely resistant to the decision that they must integrate within six years. In , federal troops were ordered to Little Rock, Arkansas , to escort the Little Rock Nine students in combating violence that occurred following the decision.
Bridges attended a segregated kindergarten in All four 6-year-old girls were escorted to school by federal marshals during the first day they attended the two schools. In the following days of that year, federal marshals continued to escort them. Bridges's father was initially reluctant, but her mother felt strongly that the move was needed not only to give her own daughter a better education, but to "take this step forward Her mother finally convinced her father to let her go to the school.
Judge J. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very very proud of her.
As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers except for one refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Bridges, and that was Barbara Henry , from Boston , Massachusetts , and for over a year Henry taught her alone, "as if she were teaching a whole class.
