Struggle For Equality Continues For Civil Rights Generation

Adorned in a freshly-ironed dress and satchel for her books, Ruby Bridges, age six, walked past an angry mob and into the doors of William Frantz Elementary School. The girl’s father was initially reluctant to let his daughter become the school’s first African American student, but her mother felt strongly that the move was needed not only to give her daughter a better education but rather to “take this step forward for all African American children.”

That was the spring of 1960.

Ruby Bridges is now age 57. As she and her peers, who were some of the youngest activists of America’s civil rights movement, begin to consider retirement, they are once again confronting another struggle for economic equality.

America’s looming retirement security crisis disproportionately affects African Americans, an alarming number of whom are retiring in poverty after a lifetime of work.

Half Are Economically Insecure

More than half of African American retirees are economically insecure because of low income, high housing and health care costs, according to a 2011 study from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass.

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