Civil rights icon calls for assault weapons ban

Bridges Hall: Safety of children next movement

JACKSON, Miss. — Ruby Bridges Hall, who faced threats and harassment when she integrated a southern school as a child several decades ago, said Friday that she is distressed by mass shootings in U.S. schools.

“When I think about our babies today and them not being safe in school, I think that should be the next civil rights movement, you know, is to ban the assault weapons so that our babies can be safe,” Hall said.

She spoke at a gala where she was being honored for advancing civil rights.

Hall, 63, a native of Tylertown, Mississippi, was 6 and known as Ruby Bridges when she became the first African-American child to enroll in an elementary school in New Orleans in 1960, accompanied by U.S. marshals. Some white parents withdrew their children, and she could only eat food from home because someone threatened to poison her.

The gala was to celebrate the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Many boycotted the state-sponsored dedication in December because Republican Gov. Phil Bryant invited President Donald Trump to attend.

Honorees included U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who was involved in civil rights activities across the South starting in the 1960s; Rita Schwerner Bender, who sought answers from state officials after her first husband, Michael Schwerner, was one of three civil-rights workers killed by Ku Klux Klansmen in 1964; former state Rep. Robert Clark, who in 1967 became the first African-American of the 20th century to win a seat in the Mississippi Legislature; and Democratic U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi.

The first time Lewis traveled to Mississippi in 1961, he was arrested and jailed with other Freedom Riders, black and white, who challenged segregation in a bus station.

Ruby Bridges Hall