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New Orleans marked the sixty fourth anniversary of the day 4 Black 6-year-old women built-in New Orleans faculties with a parade — a celebration in stark distinction to the tensions and anger that roiled the town on Nov. 14, 1960.

Federal marshals have been wanted then to escort Tessie Prevost Williams, Leona Tate, Gail Etienne and Ruby Bridges to highschool whereas white mobs opposing desegregation shouted, cursed and threw rocks. Williams, who died in July, walked into McDonogh No. 19 Elementary Faculty that day with Tate and Etienne. Bridges — maybe one of the best identified of the 4, due to a Norman Rockwell portray of the scene — braved the abuse to combine William Frantz Elementary.

The ladies now are sometimes called the New Orleans 4.

“I name them America’s little soldier women,” stated Diedra Meredith of the New Orleans Legacy Mission, the group behind the occasion. “They have been civil rights pioneers at 6 years outdated.”

“I used to be questioning why they have been so indignant with me,” Etienne recalled Thursday. “I used to be simply going to highschool and I felt like if they may get to me they’d wish to kill me — and I positively didn’t know why at 6 years outdated.”

Thursday’s observance got here 70 years after the Supreme Court docket v. Board of Training choice declaring college segregation by race unconstitutional — in a nation and metropolis the place desegregation hopes haven’t been absolutely realized. U.S. faculties in latest many years have grown way more numerous and on the identical time, by some measures, extra segregated, in accordance with an Related Press evaluation earlier this 12 months. Statistics from the nonprofit group New Faculties for New Orleans present 92% of the greater than 45,000 college students enrolled in public faculties are college students of coloration.

Nonetheless, individuals and observers of Thursday’s procession have been glad to commemorate the bravery of the youngsters and households who first broke the colour barrier.

Marching bands within the metropolis’s Central Enterprise District prompted employees and prospects to stroll out of 1 native restaurant to see what was occurring. Vacationers have been caught abruptly, too.

“We have been thrilled to return upon it,” stated Sandy Waugh, a customer from Chestertown, Maryland. “It’s so New Orleans.”

Rosie Bell, a social employee from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, stated the parade was a “cherry on high” that she wasn’t anticipating Thursday morning.

“I obtained so fortunate to see this,” Bell stated.

For Etienne, the parade was her newest likelihood to have fun an achievement she couldn’t absolutely recognize when she was a baby.

“What we did opened doorways for different individuals, for different college students, for different Black college students,” she stated. “I didn’t understand it on the time however as I obtained older I noticed that. … They stated that we rocked the nation for what we had executed, ? And I like listening to after they say that.”

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Related Press reporter Kevin McGill contributed to this story.