Teacher Ricardo is comfortably seated in front of a poster of all 12 months in large, colorful, laminated strips. He’s wearing an LA Dodgers baseball hat and has a large ring of keys hanging from a belt loop of his jeans. Black and white checkered Vans, colorful socks.

He’s totally at ease.

He shows pictures of Ruby Bridges. Ricardo asks his kindergarten class, “Do you know what an activist is? Do you know that word?”

“Nooooo,” the children reply together, from their colorful mat on the floor. Lots of pink clothes, some messy hair, hoodies. Ricardo explains that Ruby Bridges tries to help people.

And then he shows the iconic photos of school segregation, young black Ruby Bridges walking to school in her white dress, surrounded by US marshals. Ruby on the school steps, US marshals.

Ricardo tells the students how Ruby was brave and courageous. She wanted to go to a school with kids that looked like her and kids that didn’t look like her. Ricardo shares how he would have had to go to a certain kind of school, if he had gone to school when Ruby did, because of his color. “At that time, if you had less melanin, you got to go to a school that had a lot of cool things in it. If you had more melanin, your school maybe didn’t look so nice and there weren’t so many cool things.”

“That’s mean.”

“And really sad.”

“How do you suppose Ruby felt?” asks Ricardo.

“Happy.”

“Proud.”

“A little sad.”

“Yes. Happy and maybe a little sad. A little sad because there were some grownups who didn’t want her to go to the school. You know how I’ve told you that sometimes grownups are wrong? This was one of those times.”

Masterful. Speaking to students in appropriate language with massive respect for their ability to talk about big issues, important issues. I scan the kids on the rug, Black, brown, white. Lots of different amounts of melanin. I love how Ricardo has framed this conversation. He takes a moment to tell me he got this from a consultant, Monique Marshall, who worked with teachers at the school.

He shows the beginning of a video about Ruby Bridges, made for kids. They look at a picture of drinking fountains for Whites and Coloreds.

“How was that fair?” asks a boy.

“Right, doesn’t that sound ridiculous?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how it was, that’s how some of the grownups wanted to keep things.”

Then in the video a picture of the Supreme Court in 1954. They are all white. They are all men. Ricardo asks them what they notice in the picture. The children notice in their children’s way. “They are all white,” we’re on the right track, but then, “they are all presidents,” “they have different hair.”

And: “Do they help Donald Trump?” 

Ricardo asks them to look again. “They all have neckties,” “They are all just sitting there.” Ricardo accepts all of their noticings politely. It’s not a teachable moment missed, it’s a lesson in respect and love. 

November 14, 1960. Ruby integrates a southern elementary school, six years after the Supreme Court decision allowing her to do so, the first Black child in the south to attend an historically White school. With US Marshall support. With grownups yelling at her, a kindergartner. Throwing things at her, insults.

“But it didn’t stop her from going to school.”

“N. O.” says a student, indignantly.

The video ends and Ricardo says, “Ruby is still alive today. She is 70 and still working with schools. I just looked it up.”

“Cool!”

“Would you all like to write Ruby a letter during center time? Maybe we can do that.” 

The students think this is a good idea. So do I. 

“What did you learn about Ruby Bridges, everybody?”

“She was brave. She didn’t give up.”

Ricardo has made me cry, this history, these children, have made me cry. Which could be a little embarrassing, because he’s asking the students now to get up from the mats to go to their tables. I’m sitting at one of those tables in a very short chair. A little boy approaches me and I try to look like I’m not having an emotional response to this lesson. The short chair is his, he explains. I get up. He promptly invites me to sit in the chair next to him, because that chair is free. 

I’m feeling the pain of being human. It’s acute, deep in my gut, I’m holding back tears. But I’m feeling hope, too. We have to keep our hope.