by Leslie Pitterson
Decades after Ruby Bridges made history walking into a desegregated New Orleans elementary school, the nation’s first black president has chosen to honor her courage and that moment in time by hanging the painting outside of the Oval Office.
According to The Boston Globe:
The Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge has just announced that President Obama has asked it if the White House can borrow one of its most treasured paintings, Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” to mark the 50th Anniversary of Ruby Bridges’s momentous walk to school, which marked the beginning of the racial integration of the William Frantz Public School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960.
Rockwell’s painting was made for the cover of the January 14, 1964, issue of Look magazine. It’s one of his most powerful, courageous, and ardent pictures.
While the image shows her historic walk as a child, Ruby Bridges now goes by Ruby Bridges Hall and serve on the board for the Rockwell Museum. Speaking about the painting significance, she said:
“Here was a man who had been doing lots of work — painting family images — and all of the sudden decided, ‘This is what I am going to do — it’s wrong and I’m going to say that it’s wrong.’ “
The painting will be on display at the White House until October 31st.
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