We Desegregated a New Orleans School Before Ruby Bridges. History Forgot Us.

In November 1960, three 6-year-old Black girls climbed 18 steps into history, forever changing the face of American education and democracy. While Ruby Bridges became a household name for integrating William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Gail Etienne, Leona Tate, and Tessie Prevost — known as the “McDonogh Three” — faced large crowds of angry protesters as they desegregated McDonogh 19 Elementary School just blocks away. In fact, the McDonogh Three technically segregated New Orleans’ schools first, entering a white classroom before Bridges did. 

For decades, their story remained largely untold, overshadowed by the singular narrative that emerged around Bridges. Below, Etienne, 72, recounts the day she made history.

This account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I remember seeing this pregnant lady, she had a garbage can top in her hand. I saw some people had garbage cans in their hands. The people had signs that they were holding up, and they were screaming and howling and jumping and making noises, and it just was total chaos.

I could see the anger. And at 6 years old, I’m wondering what could I have done to make people react this way.

Being the only students in the school didn’t bother me because our teacher Ms. Myers, if she didn’t want us there, we couldn’t tell because she treated us fairly. She was like a grandmother figure to us. And I got the chance to go to school and made some new friends. At times, I guess, I felt kind of special because it was just the three of us.

But, we couldn’t go to the water faucet. We couldn’t go to the bathroom by ourselves. We couldn’t go outside and play. We couldn’t go by the window to sharpen your pencil, because Tessie got up one day to go do that and Ms. Myers reacted suddenly and startled, and Tessie had to come back. They had brown paper on the window so that nobody could see inside. And I guess maybe they thought snipers were going to try to shoot us.

Instead of going outside, there was the stairwell leading to the second floor, which was right outside our classroom. And underneath that stairwell was where we did everything. That was our safe space. That’s where we played, that’s where we would eat our lunch.

We didn’t have no marshals. We didn’t have no protections. The teachers didn’t want us there, the parents didn’t want us there, the students didn’t want us there. And not even the principal.

Going to T.J. Semmes Elementary School was a completely different story. Every day, you had these parents lining up in two lines, and we had to go walk through that every day. And they were hollering at us, spitting at us, calling us names.

One day, I got hit in the stomach with a baseball bat. And the guy that did it, I’m not going to say his name, but he was 16 years old in sixth grade. And it was just like a normal day. The principal did nothing, the teachers did nothing. It was no big deal.

At lunchtime, they spit in our food, or they hit us or kick us to make us drop our food, or whatever. It was a wonder that we learned anything because we were so stressed. One day a girl took and ripped my dress almost completely off me. 

We had this one teacher — that woman was so mean. She was a true racist. She used to bake cookies, brownies, whatever, and bring them to the kids to her classroom. And she’d come in the classroom and walk right by us so we could get a whiff of it and then she gave them to the white students, and we didn’t get none.

Eventually, we start fighting back. Tessie always tells this story: She said that one day she looked and she saw me just swinging my arms. She said I was just “swinging and fighting back.” I was tired of the foolishness.

I have gotten better with telling my story, because I used to cry all through it. I was on nerve medicine for a while because I was so nervous. Even today, I don’t like crowds.

I have developed the sense to realize that it’s not all white people. It wasn’t all white people. I didn’t realize what we had done — I’m trying to keep from getting emotional — it rocked the world. Those four little soldier girls, we did rock the world. America saw how they were treating us, and it wasn’t right.

People wouldn’t believe me and they’d come up to me and ask me, why I don’t have no movie or why I don’t have a book and why are they always talking about Ruby. “Why don’t they ever say your name?” And that every time Black History Month comes up or something related to that, she’d be on TV, being interviewed alone. 

But Tessie, Leona, and I talked about this for a while and we came to understand that our story wasn’t a pretty story. The white students didn’t leave her school like they did with us. They didn’t beat her up like they did us. So her story was a much prettier story. And the white people, they don’t want a ugly, bad story with the way they treated us 6-year-old little girls. They don’t want that to be broadcasted. And it upsets me, but I can’t say Ruby lied. But the truth is that we were omitted.