Ruby Bridges
At the tender age of six, Ruby Bridges advanced the cause of civil rights in November 1960 when she became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South.
Born on September 8, 1954, Bridges was the oldest of five children for Lucille and Abon Bridges, farmers in Tylertown, Mississippi. When Ruby was two years old, her parents moved their family to New Orleans, Louisiana in search of better work opportunities. Ruby’s birth year coincided with the US Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, which ended racial segregation in public schools.
Nonetheless, southern states continued to resist integration, and in 1959, Ruby attended a segregated New Orleans kindergarten. A year later, however, a federal court ordered Louisiana to desegregate. The school district created entrance exams for African American students to see whether they could compete academically at the all-white school. Ruby and five other students passed the exam
Her parents were torn about whether to let her attend the all-white William Frantz Elementary School, a few blocks from their home. Her father resisted, fearing for his daughter’s safety; her mother, however, wanted Ruby to have the educational opportunities that her parents had been denied. Meanwhile, the school district dragged its feet, delaying her admittance until November 14. Two of the other students decided not to leave their school at all; the other three were sent to the all-white McDonough Elementary School.
Ruby and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals to the school every day that year. She walked past crowds screaming vicious slurs at her. Undeterred, she later said she only became frightened when she saw a woman holding a black baby doll in a coffin. She spent her first day in the principal’s office due to the chaos created as angry white parents pulled their children from school. Ardent segregationists withdrew their children permanently. Barbara Henry, a white Boston native, was the only teacher willing to accept Ruby, and all year, she was a class of one. Ruby ate lunch alone and sometimes played with her teacher at recess, but she never missed a say of school that year.
While some families supported her bravery—and some northerners sent money to aid her family— others protested throughout the city. The Bridges family suffered for their courage: Abon lost his job, and grocery stores refused to sell to Lucille. Her share-cropping grandparents were evicted from the farm where they had lived for a quarter-century. Over time, other African American students enrolled; many years later, Ruby’s four nieces would also attend. In 1964, artist Norman Rockwell celebrated her courage with a painting of that first day entitled, “The Problem We All Live With.”
Ruby graduated from a desegregated high school, became a travel agent, married and had four sons. She was reunited with her first teacher, Henry, in the mid 1990s, and for a time the pair did speaking engagements together. Ruby later wrote about her early experiences in two books and received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award.
A lifelong activist for racial equality, in 1999, Ruby established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. In 2000, she was made an honorary deputy marshal in a ceremony in Washington, DC.
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Claudette Colvin
Major movements and revolutions in history are marked by big events, but are always comprised of smaller events which are often overlooked. Claudette Colvin’s story is one of these significant but overlooked events.
Her story begins as a young girl growing up in segregated Montgomery, Alabama. She knew firsthand of the humiliation and violence that black people suffered if they did not toe the line of Jim Crow. Her friend was put to death for an innocent flirtatious gesture toward a white girl. Colvin, a studious child, was determined to get the best education, become a lawyer, and fight for civil rights.
On March 2, 1955, however, Colvin’s life changed forever. The fifteen-year-old boarded a segregated city bus on her way home from school, her mind filled with what she’d been learning during Negro History Week. At one stop, several white passengers got on, and the bus driver ordered her and three others to move, though there were other seats available for the white passengers. Three got up, Colvin stayed. As she recalled, “I felt like Sojourner Truth was pushing down on one shoulder and Harriet Tubman was pushing down on the other–saying. ‘Sit down girl!’ I was glued to my seat.”
She was taken off the bus by two police officers whose behavior made her fear that she might be assaulted. She was charged with violating segregation laws, misconduct, and resisting arrest. Her conviction and subsequent probation left Colvin feeling she would never get the education and professional life she so desired.
The African American community was outraged. The Reverand Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., came to Montgomery to fight her arrest, and leaders in the civil rights movement sought a way to end bus segregation. They looked at Claudette Colvin as a potential “face” of the movement. As Colvin’s friend Reverend Johnson told her, “Everyone prays for freedom. We’ve all been praying and praying. But you’re different–you want your answer the next morning. And I think you’ve just brought the revolution to Montgomery.” However, she was deemed too young and her complexion too dark to be the right f it. Then she became pregnant (by a man whose name Colvin will not disclose), and that was that.
Nine months later Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, and the boycott that was contemplated when Colvin was arrested, began. Parks was educated, older, lighterskinned, and employed as a seamstress. Although her refusal to move was not directly planned, she was already part of the civil rights movement. She had been trained for civil disobedience by the NAACP.
Claudette Colvin’s role was not over. She and the three other young women who were harassed on that bus in 1955, became the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of segregated buses. Browder v. Gayle and went all the way to the Supreme Court. where the justices found that Montgomery’s bus segregation was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, a significant civil rights victory.
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Mari Copeny
16-year-old activist, philanthropist, and “future president” Mari Copeny is on the front lines of tackling America’s water crisis head on, and helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint. Since then she has expanded her efforts to help communities across the nation dealing with toxic drinking water.
Mari is a 16 year old from Flint, Michigan known globally as Little Miss Flint. Born on July 6th, 2007. She first entered the public spotlight when her letter to President Obama about the water crisis prompted him to visit the city and survey the water crisis for himself. That visit ultimately led to him approving $100 million dollars in relief for the city of Flint. Her young age has not prevented her from making a significant impact on the dialogue around environmental racism and confronted the entire country with the reality faced by victims of state negligence. Her youthful honesty prevents political leaders from being able to ignore the consequences of neglectful leadership. She gives voice to the unheard hardships of Americans trapped by a collapsing and toxic infrastructure.
In 2017 Mari continued her dedication to social justice by becoming a national youth ambassador to the Women’s March on Washington and the National Climate Mari. Mari is also dedicated to preventing bullying and works with the anti-bullying group Trendsetters Productions. She is also a member of the Flint Youth Justice League. She also sat on the 2019 Kid Box board of directors as the chairwoman of the board. She also proudly works with Eighteen by 18, a youth organization founded by her mentor Yara Shahidi. Mari has also spoken twice at the March for Science about how the Flint water crisis has affected her community. Mari has a doll that is modeled after her by the doll company Lottie. She also sits on the Flint Youth Justice League and the MDE Anti-Racism Student Advisory Council.
Mari has used her platform to not only bring awareness to the water crisis in her community but to also give back. Mari has raised over $700,000 for her Flint Kids projects including giving out over 19,000 backpacks stuffed with school supplies, a yearly Christmas event with thousands of toys, hundreds of Easter baskets, movie screenings, and lots of other events centered around the kids in her community. She has a book project where she gets books by authors of color into the hands of local children. Her dear Flint Kids letter project has received thousands of letters of support to the children of Flint from people all around the world. She also raised over $250k and given away over a million bottles of bottled water. But she takes the most pride in pivoting away from single-use bottled water to partnering with a company (Hydroviv) to produce her very own water filter, that is shipped all over the country to those that are facing toxic drinking water, to date she has raised over $700k to produce and distribute her filters.
Mari Copeny has been featured in Teen Vogue, The Guardian, VICE, TIME, Refinery 29, The Washington Post, NBC News, Rewire, Buzzfeed, and more for her vocal opposition to the injustices of environmental racism. When Mari grows up she plans on running for president in 2044.
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Dr. Reatha Clark King
Dr. Reatha Clark King was born in the rural Deep South of Georgia long before the civil rights movement, when Jim Crow laws created a system of economic, social, and educational disadvantages for black Americans. The daughter of a poorly educated sharecropper and a domestic servant who divorced when she was young, Reatha and her two sisters moved around Southern Georgia several times, and spent summers picking cotton and gathering tobacco in the fields to earn money.
The difficulty of her circumstances did not stop Reatha from graduating as valedictorian of Moultrie High School for Negro Youth in 1954. She received a scholarship to attend Clark College in Atlanta and, upon graduation, was awarded a Woodrow Wilson fellowship that made it financially possible for her to attend graduate school. Reatha received her doctorate in 1963, becoming one of the first African-American women to receive a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago.
From 1963 to 1968, Reatha was a research chemist with the prestigious National Bureau of Standards (known today as the National Institute of Standards and Technology) in Washington, D.C. Highlights of her work there included inventing special equipment that allowed her to study very reactive materials for rocket fuels and avoid explosions—an important piece of NASA’s rocket design work in the space program. She also received an outstanding performance rating and won the meritorious Publication Award for her paper on flourine flame calorimetry (the science of measuring the heat of chemical reactions.)
Reatha moved from the laboratory to the lecture hall when she joined the chemistry faculty of York College in New York in 1968. Eventually she was named associate dean of natural sciences and mathematics, and then associate dean of academic affairs, all while earning her M.B.A. from Columbia University.
In 1977, Reatha’s career path took another turn, and she was named president of Metropolitan State University, where she promoted opportunities for women and minorities in higher education. Under her leadership, the school significantly increased its number of graduates, expanded its curriculum, and added a new management graduate program.
In 1988, Reatha was invited to become president and executive director of the General Mills Foundation, a position she held for 14 years. During that time, she increased the foundation assets and corporate contributions from $7 million to more than $50 million, and championed programs helping African Americans gain access to higher education.
In her retirement years, Reatha remains an active, engaged voice for social change. No stranger to volunteer and community service throughout her career, Reatha has been a board member for more than 30 civic, education, and non-profit organizations, and served a combined total of over 125 years of service on corporate boards. She has also served on 20 government commissions and task forces.
A biography of Reatha’s life and work, Find a Trail or Blaze One, was published in 2022.
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Dr. Josie Johnson
Dr. Josie Robinson Johnson was born on October 7, 1930 in San Antonio, Texas. She has played an active role in the civil rights movement since her teenage years, when she and her father canvassed Houston to gather signatures on an anti-poll tax petition.
In the early 1960s, Josie lobbied professionally for passage of bills concerning issues such as fair housing and employment opportunities. In 1964, she traveled from Minneapolis to Mississippi with an integrated group of women to witness and take part in the struggle there. After visiting an open-air freedom school where blacks were organizing, the group learned the school was bombed later that day. Josie became a community organizer for Project ENABLE, a pioneering effort in developing parenting skills and strengthening family life in 1965. A member of the Minneapolis Urban League, she served as acting director between 1967 and 1968.
Josie worked with elected officials many times over the years. In 1968, she became a legislative and community liaison as a mayoral aide in Minneapolis during a time of trouble for African Americans in the city. She was the executive assistant to the lieutenant governor of Colorado from 1975 to 1978. She returned to Texas in 1978 to supervise Judson Robinson’s campaign staff. In 1980, she served as deputy campaign manager for the Jimmy Carter presidential campaign in Tennessee.
Josie has also had an ongoing relationship with the University of Minnesota. Between 1971 and 1973, she served on the University’s Board of Regents. She earned a B.A. in Sociology at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and an M.A. and Ed.D. at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The University of Minnesota offered her a senior fellowship in 1987. Johnson directed its All-University Forum as diversity director from 1990 to 1992. That year, she became responsible for minority affairs and diversity at the college as the associate vice president for academic affairs. The University of Minnesota established the annual Josie Robinson Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award in her honor.
Josie founded Josie Robinson Johnson and Associates in 1996. She is a Minneapolis Institute of Arts trustee, a Minnesota Medical Foundation trustee, and sits on the advisory board of the Harriet Tubman Center. She is a recipient of the Committed to the Vision Award from the Minneapolis Department of Civil Rights and the African American Community Endowment Fund Award.
Her 2019 memoir, Hope in the Struggle, provides insights into her life’s work as well as the racial history of the Twin Cities.
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Rose McGee
Rose McGee is President and Founder of the Sweet Potato Comfort Pie organization. She is a well-known facilitator, one of Minnesota’s 50 Over 50, a member of the Golden Valley League of Women Voters, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and Minneapolis Women’s Rotary, and a Humanities Officer with the Minnesota Humanities Center. She resides in Golden Valley, Minnesota, where she was named Citizen of the Year and has been presented with the Bill Hobbs Human Rights Award twice. She is a 2023 Facing Race Award recipient from the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation, a 2023 Black Collectives Fellow, a 2023 and 2024 University of Minnesota College of Liberal Arts Hub Fellow and a 2019 Bush Fellowship recipient, and is featured in the national PBS documentary, A Few Good Pie Places.
Rose is the author of Story Circle Stories (Belfrey Press) and the newly released children’s book, Can’t Nobody Make a Sweet Potato Pie Like Our Mama (Minnesota Historical Society Press). She also authored the play, Kumbayah The Juneteenth Story, which has been performed across the state of Minnesota. Rose has delivered a TEDx Talk called “The Power of Pie.” Other recognition includes NAACP Outstanding Service Awards; Stairstep Foundation’s African Immersion to Ghana, West Africa; Jerome Foundation Travel Grant to Ghana, West Africa; and the Minnesota Social Impact Center Changemaker Award. In 2021, Sweet Potato Comfort Pie and Rose were featured in the Japanese press (Kyodo News) as one of “50 Positive Stories in the World During COVID-19.” Rose was also cited as an influential changemaker and leader in Reader’s Digest, Guidepost and The Washington Post’s Lily Edition. Rose earned her undergraduate degree from Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee, and her master’s degree from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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