Through My Eyes

When we left school that first day, the crowd outside was even bigger and louder than it had been in the morning. There were reporters and film cameras and people everywhere. I guess the police couldn’t keep
them behind the barricades. It seemed to take us a long time to get to the marshals’ car.
Later on I learned there had been protestors in front of the two integrated schools the whole day. They wanted to be sure white parents would boycott the school and not let their children attend. Groups of high school boys, joining the protestors, paraded up and down the street and sang new verses to old hymns. Their favorite was “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in which they changed the chorus to “Glory, glory,
segregation, the South will rise again.” Many of the boys carried signs and said awful things, but most of all I remember seeing a black doll in a coffin, which frightened me more than anything else.
After the first day, I was glad to get home. I wanted to change my clothes and go outside to friends. My mother wasn’t too worried about me because the police had set up barricades at each end of the block. Only local residents were allowed on our street. That afternoon, I taught a friend the chant I had learned: “Two, four, six, eight, we don’t want to integrate.” My friend and I didn’t know what the words meant, but we would jump rope to it every day after school.
My father heard about the trouble at school. That night when he came home from work, he said I was his “brave little Ruby.”