Federal Marshal, Wallace Downs rides with Gail Etienne to McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana on November 14, 1960. (The Times-Picayune Archives)
•The first-grader was one of the McDonogh Three, a nickname for the three black six-year-old girls who were the first black students to enroll in the previously all-white school in the city.
•Even though segregated schools had been illegal since the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954, no states in the American South had taken action to integrate their schools.
•Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost had all attended the black-only schools in their neighborhood, until November 14, 1960, when they arrived at a previously all-white segregated school called McDonogh No. 19.
•On the same day, another six-year-old black girl named Ruby Bridges integrated a second New Orleans public school called William Frantz Elementary.
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