Gail Etienne has built a center at the former school she and her two six-year-old friends braved angry crowds to attend – the same day as Ruby Bridges’ better-known experience
G
ail Etienne still remembers her first day at McDonogh 19 elementary school in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. As her family pulled up to the school in the car with the federal marshals, they saw crowds of angry people screaming. Some carried garbage cans and sticks. Others were holding picket signs against school integration.
“I’ll never forget it,” Etienne said. “I saw this one lady was pregnant and had a garbage can top in her hand. I’m wondering, at six years old, what could I have done at six years old to these people to make them act the way they were acting? I really thought that if they could get to me, they’d want to kill me. I didn’t know why. What had I done? I was just going to school.”
Etienne was one of three six-year-old Black girls alongside Leona Tate and Tessie Prevost, who were escorted by federal marshals into McDonogh 19 on 14 November 1960. It was the same day federal marshals escorted Ruby Bridges to William Frantz elementary school in the same city. Bridges’ story became immortalized in several books and a Disney film, but the experiences of Etienne, Prevost and Tate were largely unknown until recently.
