Through My Eyes

Nonfiction | Biography | Middle Grade | Published in 1999

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Foreword-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-6

Chapters 7-10

Chapters 11-14

Chapters 15-18

Chapters 19-23

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 11-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 11 Summary: “Another First Grader”

Bridges introduces the Gabrielle family, who, like the Foremans, believed in integration and kept their child enrolled in William Frantz Public School after Bridges enrolled. She describes them as “brave” (28). Their young daughter, Yolanda, was another first grader, although Bridges says that she never met or saw her classmate at school. She explains that “the school building was large, and any white children who attended were kept far from my classroom” (28).

For three weeks after Ruby started attending, the Gabrielles continued bringing Yolanda to school. In that time, vandals attacked their house, protestors continually bombarded the family in public, and angry segregationists “threatened to hurt the Gabrielle children” (28). The abuse drove the Gabrielles not only to withdraw their daughter from the school but also to move to a Northern state.

An excerpt from a 1962 Good Housekeeping magazine accompanies this chapter, in which a journalist discusses Yolanda’s realization that she was in danger as she examined the crowd heckling and threatening her family. She started having nightmares and begged her mother not to make her go to school.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Three Little Girls at McDonogh”

Chapter 12 is one of the shortest chapters in the book and lists the young Black girls who integrated the McDonogh Elementary school in New Orleans. Photos are included of the girls entering the schools accompanied by federal marshals, like Bridges did, enclosed by several tall men. She identifies them only by their first names: Leona, Tessie, and Gail.

There are two short excerpts from newspapers that depicted the same type of cruelty that Bridges faced at William Frantz at McDonogh. A note from the U.S. News & World Report said that by November 17—just a few days after the three African American students started at McDonogh—only one white first-grader was in attendance. It notes that the school normally had 467 students, and that Bridges’s school normally had 576 students (31).

Chapter 13 Summary: “Riots in New Orleans”

Chapter 13 goes beyond the immediate sites at the integrated public schools. Violence “broke out across the city” with rioters vandalizing cars, throwing “flaming bottles of gasoline” and injuring passersby (32).

Page 33 is a photograph of three members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) standing next to an enormous burning cross at a nighttime rally. Bridges explains that the KKK had already been active across the South but notes that rioters were “leaving burning crosses as warnings in black neighborhoods” (32). White parents traveled to Baton Rouge, the state capital, to threaten District Judge J. Skelly Wright. They shouted about “slaughtering” him, according to local press (32).

Chapter 14 Summary: “A Week of Trouble”

This chapter continues to elaborate on the violence from white segregationists that accompanied school integration. She describes daytime assaults on Black people by enraged white people and about increased police presence through the city.

By this point, Thanksgiving was approaching, and Bridges credits the coming holiday with helping to abate the rioting. Public schools were closed for a week-long holiday break, which meant a break in the gatherings outside of the schools during the school day. The school board again tried to halt integration, citing “certain legal questions” that Bridges does not elaborate on, but the court did not grant the halt. Bridges mentions Thurgood Marshall, an NAACP lawyer who publicly “opposed any suspension of desegregation” (34). Marshall went on to become the first Black Supreme Court Justice.

Chapters 11-14 Analysis

Violence continued to mount in the timespan discussed in these chapters. The narrative departs from Bridges’s own immediate experiences and visits other nearby sites, like McDonogh No. 19, city streets, and the state capitol. Threats of violence targeted all African Americans and any white allies. The central issue in the violence was, according to Bridges, school desegregation.

The week before the Thanksgiving break appears to have been the apex of protest and violence in New Orleans. Tension did not vanish when school resumed, but protests did not continue at such a volume as it continually failed to force a reversal to the decision to desegregate schools.

This section is the only time Bridges incorporates the Ku Klux Klan. It is important to understand her story within this broader context of violence. Violence did not come just from extremist groups, either: “whites assaulted blacks in broad daylight” (34). The Black population defended itself against attacks, “even though the NAACP urged them not to” (34). The Civil Rights Movement happened both in courts and on streets as organizations attempted to bring people together under different visions of the best approach, but neither the white nor the Black population in the city was a united front for or against desegregation. These chapters help to illustrate the complexity of history.