One morning Mrs. Henry noticed Ruby walking toward the school as usual but then she stopped, turned toward the angry, howling crowd and seemed to even be trying to speak to them. The crowd seemed ready to pounce on her while the marshals tried in vain to keep Ruby moving. Finally, she stopped talking and walked into the school.
Mrs. Henry immediately asked Ruby what happened; why did she try and talk to such a belligerent crowd. Ruby irritatingly responded that she didn't stop to talk with them.
"Ruby, I saw you talking," Mrs. Henry pressed. "I saw your lips moving."
"I wasn't talking," said Ruby. "I was praying...I was praying for them."
Evidently, Ruby had stopped every morning a few blocks away from the school to pray for the people who hated her. But on this morning she had forgotten until she was already in the middle of the malevolent mob.
After school that day, Ruby bolted through the crowd as usual and headed for home with her two companion federal marshals. After a few blocks and with the crowds behind her, she paused as she usually did to say the prayer that she had repeated not once but twice a day -- before and after school:
Please God, try to forgive these people.
Because even if they say those bad things,
They don't know what they're doing.
So You could forgive them,
Just like You did those folks a long time ago
When they said terrible things about You.
This website gave me a quote from Ruby Bridges. The quote was about how she would stop and pray for the angry crowd of people outside of her school every morning. This is a secondary source.
