“BREAD, ROSES, & RUBIES”

A Sermon for the Annual Budget Drive &
the 50th Anniversary of Ruby Bridges’ Long Walk
The Rev. Melanie Morel-Ensminger
First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans
Sunday, November 7, 2010

In the fall of 1960, I had just turned eight, and was in the 3rd grade in Chalmette in St. Bernard Parish. At that time, my father, Barney Morel, worked “in the city” (as we used to say) as Sub-District Director of the United Steelworkers Union of the AFL-CIO. As such, he was known in local labor circles and in the local Democratic Party. And so he was selected by Mayor Chep Morrison to serve on a civic committee, consisting of representatives of business and labor and prominent socialites to help facilitate integration in the New Orleans Public Schools (and to provide political cover for the mayor, who could point to the committee as being responsible instead of himself).

The week my father first began meeting with the Mayor’s committee, he and my mother sat down with my sister and me (my sister was then seven; our two younger siblings were babies) to explain that we were going to go through a challenging time as a family and that we were going to stick together and be brave. They explained that Daddy was involved in something very important, but that some racist white people would not understand and would probably get angry. They said we were not allowed to answer the telephone any more, and that if we ever smelled smoke in the house, we were to go straight to the back yard and then to our neighbors’ house, where Mommy and Daddy would meet us.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized what was going on, and why my parents were so cautious. For weeks, our home phone rang off the hook with obscene anonymous callers, each of whom received my mother’s measured, “Thank you for calling” as she hung up. Thankfully, the threatened fire-bombs did not happen but it was a long time before I found out that other white families were not holding fire drills in their homes at that time.

On November 14, 1960, Ruby Bridges, having been selected by the committee as the ideal black student on the basis of a special test and interviews with herself and her parents, walked with an escort of federal agents (the NOPD had refused to guard her) through a gauntlet of screaming white adults and teenagers, many of them throwing garbage and using foul language, to enter William Frantz School in the Upper Ninth Ward as a first grader. It was the school my father had attended as a child. (It was also years later that I began to question why public schools in only working-class neighborhoods of New Orleans were first chosen to be “integrated” by only one or two or three black children.) The images of the primly dressed little black girl, walking with men in suit through hysterical angry crowds were broadcast across the nation and around the world, inspiring artist Norman Rockwell to create his strangely-named painting, called “The Problem We All Live With.”

At six years old Ruby was two years younger than I was. Every night, I sat with my parents and watched the news as this little girl so close to my own age bravely walked to and from school through angry crowds, escorted by gray-suited G-men. Every night, I wondered if I would have had her courage; every night, I wondered if I could have done what she was doing. Some nights I even dreamed I was with her, out there taking that long walk through those scary crowds.

Many years later, I actually met Ruby Bridges, along with Dr. Robert Coles, who wrote this morning’s story, as well as a book called The Moral Life of Children, which featured Ruby and Coles’ work with her as a psychologist as she went through her ordeal. They were appearing at a bookstore in the French Quarter, promoting new books they had written. Later that year, Ruby spoke at a service at First Church, in our old building, when the late Rev. Suzanne Meyer was our minister.

We retell Ruby’s story today at the same service that kicks off our Annual Budget Drive because there are important ways that these two things fit together. To any outside observer, there was nothing special about the Bridges family or about Ruby. Her parents were hard-working and ambitious for their children; they were devoted church-going people. They were loving and caring. Ruby was a sweet girl, good-natured, eager to please, eager to learn; she believed in God and in the Christian message with a child’s innocent faith. But together they did something extraordinary, something that required sacrifice (Ruby’s father was fired from the garage where he worked for allowing his child to integrate a white school), something that advanced not only their family, but people they didn’t know – and would never know. They wanted more than bread in their lives – they wanted roses too.

Dr. Coles asked Ruby during one of their counseling sessions how she was able to do what she did, walking that long walk through a mob threatening violence, and she answered thoughtfully, “I guess I knew I was the Ruby who had to do it.”

The members and friends of First Church are also ordinary, hard-working people. We are none of us rich, living off our gold-plated investments. (Not that we wouldn’t welcome such members, it’s just we don’t have any right now.) We too are church-going people, with a deep commitment to our faith. And we too are faced with a big challenge that requires sacrifice, with our church complex needing so much rebuilding and updating since Katrina, and an important ministry needing support, and we, we alone are the “rubies” who have to do it.

With the city in chaos and the state legislature publicly advising white parents to keep their children out of the public schools, Ruby Bridges walked the long walk toward equal justice. With the city once again in a time of chaotic change and the state legislature mandating improved building codes post-Katrina, we need to take the long walk of recovery together.

But it is not only recovery that we seek. It is not enough to simply rebuild our church complex up to today’s codes, not enough for us to finally complete the Community Kitchen that we will share with the New Orleans AIDS Task Force, not enough for us to get new furniture for the Sunday School classrooms and chairs for the Sanctuary, not enough for us to repair the front walk-way and put in outside lighting. All of that is necessary, of course – it is the “bread” that sustains and nurtures this faith community.

But we also need the “roses.” In the midst of threat and danger, little Ruby Bridges took time every school day to pray for the mobs who cursed her. If we do not strengthen our spiritual message, if we do not continue reaching out in the wider community, if we do not join with others in Greater New Orleans to widen the circle of love and justice and equality, then we are not doing our jobs. As Rev. Suzanne always used to say, “If we end the year in the black, with extra money, we are not doing our jobs.”

This morning we remember and honor the story of Ruby Bridges and her long walk, and we also kick off the church’s Annual Budget Drive. Commitment and courage on the part of ordinary people, working for love and justice, values that are precious to us – bread and roses and rubies. When you are contacted in the days to come by your Visiting Stewards, please remember the story of Ruby Bridges. There are no outside saviors who will step in and take care of what needs to be – there’s only us, stepping forward with commitment and courage to do what must be done both to keep our church going, and much more importantly, to keep our ministry in the city going. We are the rubies who have to do it.