In the Fall of 1960, William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans was integrated to heavy opposition. A group of middle-aged white women, dubbed The Cheerleaders, would gather outside the building each day to hurl racist obscenities, not only at Ruby Bridges as she was escorted in and out by U.S. marshals (pictured below), but also at white parents who still brought their children to the school. John Steinbeck, during his road trip that would become Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962), snuck into New Orleans to see Ruby Bridges and the Cheerleaders (and the crowds that would come to cheer on the Cheerleaders) for himself after spending Thanksgiving in Texas. It was an experience that deeply disturbed him and became the most famous section of his book.
