Civil rights icon Ruby Bridges visited Topeka to commemorate the anniversary of the day she desegregated a school in the Deep South.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement and living in a post-Brown v. Board of Education world, Bridges was among more than 100 students to volunteer to be the first Black children to integrate white schools. Though when the day came, Ruby would become known for walking her path alone.

At the age of 6, Bridges was the first Black student to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on Nov. 14, 1960. This followed a ruling by U.S. Circuit Judge J. Skelly Wright, who ordered the desegregation of schools in the city after six years of resistance to Brown v.

Ruby Bridges, a civil rights icon known for walking among the first group of students to desegregate New Orleans public schools in 1960, on Thursday told an auditorium full of Kansas students, “You cannot believe that you can only trust people who look like you.

School integration expanded following the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial segregation in schools.