«Время пришло». Часы «Гражданские права» Рубин Бриджес объясняет, почему недавние протесты вселяют надежду

Civil rights icon and activist Ruby Bridges says that when she saw “the children bewitch to the streets” afterGeorge Floyd’s killing,she “felt love it used to be about time.”

In a video collection TIME is producing with journalist Katie Couric, Bridges says that when she saw photos of Floyd’s loss of life she thought about the “children staring at and what they need to comprise been considering.” She explains that she thinks the video used to be the “straw that broke the backs of so many folk sooner than that young man,” sparking protests across the U.S. and across the world.

“It made me mediate about the protesters from 1960,” Bridges says of when she first saw the present mass demonstrations. “It made me mediate about the day that I walked up these stairs when I integrated Frantz faculty.”

Bridges used to be handiest six years extinct when shemade historyby changing into the first Shaded child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Most elementary College in New Orleans in 1960. She used to be met with an offended crowd of white protesters—and for her grasp security, four federal marshals escorted her to school on daily foundation that twelve months.

Bridges tells Couric she “for sure” remembers her first day on the faculty. Her fogeys had never defined that she used to be integrating a white faculty, she says, and so when she first arrived and saw these protesting integration she thought “we had stumbled real into a Mardi Gras parade.”

She also recalls how some other folk protesting her enrollment would carry spherical a Shaded doll internal a baby’s coffin, which precipitated nightmares. “That used to be my first stumble upon, knowingly, about racism,” Bridges tells Couric. “I realized at that time it’s no longer Mardi Gras. It all came collectively and made sense then. I knew that it used to be about me and I knew that it used to be about the color of my skin.”

The racism and violence that Bridges confronted used to be the topic of the iconic 1964 listThe Yelp We All Live With, which vulnerable President Barack Obamaattach inin the White Dwelling in the hallway out of doorways the Oval Space of business in 2011.

“I will’t even begin as much as drawl you how moved I was,” Bridges says of when she used to be invited to the White Dwelling to test up on the list. She shares that upon her meeting with President Obama, every person else in the room began to assert. “It used to be history,” she recalls. “It used to be these two generations coming collectively. The entire lot that all these other folk fought for.”

Bridges tells Couric that she thinksthe protests of this daytest up on “very varied from the protesters all the way via the Civil Rights Movement,” because of the their diversity. “Sure, there had been hundreds white other folk, Hispanics, hundreds these who took piece all the way via the Civil Rights Movement,” says Bridges. “However what we’ve viewed this day in the streets is terribly, very extremely efficient.”

“They’ve taken on this price,” she continues. “I mediate the baton has been handed.” Bridges says the protests gain her hopeful about the long tear of the U.S., adding, “I mediate when we originate our doorways and we’re in a position to return out, this world goes to be a varied blueprint.”

This interview is piece of a certain collection produced in collaboration with Katie Couric. Study extra fromTIME Experiences with Katie Couric, and register for her weekday morning newsletterWake-Up Name with Katie Couric.

Write toMadeleine Carlisle atmadeleine.carlisle@time.com.