Melba Pattillo and Ruby Bridges: Two Heroes of School Integration

Teaching Theme of the Week

from Education World®

Put your students in the shoes of those who integrated Little Rock High School in 1957-58.

Subjects: Language Arts, Educational Technology, Health, Social Studies

Grade Levels: 3-5, 6-8, 9-12

Objectives
Students will:

• read about the kids who took part in early school integration efforts in Little Rock, Arkansas, and New Orleans;
• read recent reflections by two of those former students;
• role-play an interview with Melba Pattillo, one of nine students who integrated Little Rock High Schoo;
• read background and look at photos about the integration efforts in Little Rock; and,
• put themselves in the shoes of those kids who were pioneers in school integration and write a diary entry one of them might have written after the first week in her new school.

Keywords
Ruby Bridges, Melba Pattillo, Little Rock, integration, civil rights, Black History, African American, hero, Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall

Materials Needed

• computer with Internet access, or copies of two articles and an interview (see below) printed from the Web
• a copy of the book Through My Eyes, by Ruby Bridges, from your local library (optional)
• pencils and paper

Procedure
In this lesson, students read the recollections of two women who were among the pioneers of school integration in the Deep South.

Introduce students to the two women:

• Melba Pattillo, now Melba Pattillo Beals, was one of nine students to integrate Little Rock (Arkansas) High School.
• Ruby Bridges, now Ruby Bridges Hall, was a first grader when she became the first black child to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.

Share the resources below with students; they are reflections of two girls' experiences that were written by the girls as grown women. You might share these pages as a class, or students might read them online or in printed form on their own.

• Integrating Central High: The Melba Pattillo Story
• Ruby Bridges Hall: My Story

After reading those resources, you might also:

• Read aloud the entire book, Through My Eyes, by Ruby Bridges (published by Scholastic). After reading, pose questions from the Discussion Guide to help students put their reading in perspective.
• Share an inspiring interview with Melba Pattillo Beals. In this recent interview, Pattillo Beals responds to questions from students who have read her story. You might have students read this interview as a round-robin activity. Print out the interview. Then provide each student with a section (one question and its answer) of the interview. Have the students practice reading Beals' response to the question they are assigned. Appoint one student to act as moderator. That student will ask each question and the student with the corresponding answer will read Beals' response.

After sharing the thoughts of those two women as they look back on their early experiences, challenge students to attempt to put themselves in the shoes of one of those two girls; ask students to write a journal entry that one of the girls might have written after the first week in their new school.

Additional Resources: Some of the following resources will offer students added background about, and a little more insight into, the experiences of Pattillo and Bridges:

• Little Rock Integration Project The photos and documents in this excellent compilation of resources, which includes Elizabeth Eckford Goes to School, offer disturbing and poignant glimpses into the events in Little Rock.
• The 1957-58 School Year A timeline of events that year at Little Rock High School.
• The Little Rock Nine This resource tells what became of the nine students who integrated Little Rock High School.
• The Tiger Articles from 1957-58 issues of The Tiger, the student newspaper at Little Rock High School.

Assessment
Students publish their diary entries for their classmates to read.

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