A 6 Year Old Prays for Her Enemies

Ruby Bridges
…In 1960 a federal judge ordered the all-white schools in
New Orleans to admit African American students. After several delays a black
first-grader, Ruby Bridges, entered William T. Frantz School. Each day Ruby
went into the school and left it through a howling mob. She was subjected to
violent and vile language. Foul names and curses were hurled at her. People
shook their fist, and screamed that they were going to kill her. Robert Coles,
the now-famous psychiatrist, went to the school, initially out of curiosity,
and observed the calm and dignity with which Ruby passed through the mob. He
interviewed her teacher, her parents and finally Ruby herself.
The teacher told Coles that she had seen Ruby talking to
people in the street, but when Coles asked Ruby about it she said that she
wasn’t talking to them, she was praying for them. Ruby explained that her
parents and her minister said that she ought to pray for such people because
“they needed praying for.” Coles was perplexed, but on one occasion his wife
helpfully asked: “What would you do if you were going through a mob like that
twice a day?” She construed this scenario: “What would you do if to get to the
Harvard Club in the morning and leave it in the afternoon you had to go through
those mobs and even the police wouldn’t protect you?” Coles decide that
the first thing he would do in a situation like that was to call the police.
“But Ruby couldn’t call the police. The police were on the side of the mobs.”
The second thing he thought he would do was to get a lawyer. “Ruby had no
lawyer. Ruby had not even been born at the hands of a doctor.” The third thing
Coles thought he would attempt would be to use his training, his knowledge, and
his skill with language against these people. He would expose their sickness
and marginal intelligence. “But Ruby did not have the language of sociology or
psychology to turn on this crowd. She would not even call them rednecks.” The
fourth thing Coles told his wife he might do in Ruby’s circumstances would be
to write an article about it, maybe even turn it into a book. “But Ruby was
just learning to read and write.” What Ruby did was to pray for them, not only
as she passed through their mindless rage twice a day, but at night before she
went to bed. She told Coles that she should especially be the one to pray for
them. When he asked why, she said, “Because if you go through what they are
doing to you, you’re the one who should be praying for them…The minister said
that Jesus went through a lot of trouble, and forgive them, because they didn’t
know what they’re doing.”