This is a short biography of Ruby Bridges. Would you be so kind as to read slowly? This recording is meant for A2-level students. Thanks a lot for your help.
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 Briges, 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 coincided with the U.S Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, which ended racial segregation in public schools.
Nonetheless, southern states resisted integration, and in 1959, Ruby attended a segregated school in New Orleans. Ruby and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals to the school every day that year.
A lifelong activist for racial equality, in 1999, Ruby established the Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education.
