Charles Burks was a Deputy U.S. Marshal and World War II B-17 pilot who became one of four federal marshals escorting six-year-old Ruby Bridges into William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. His act of duty helped dismantle school segregation in the American South. He passed away on June 19, 2017, in Logansport, Indiana, at the age of 95.
A War Hero Before He Was a Civil Rights Figure
Most accounts of Charles Burks begin in 1960. His real story starts two decades earlier, at 18,000 feet over Belgium.
In 1940, Charlie joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, going on to serve as a B-17 bomber pilot in Europe. On April 22, 1944, his plane was shot down over Brussels, Belgium. He was a Second Lieutenant at the time.
Captured by the Nazis, Burks was sent to Stalag Luft 3, near Sagan, Germany, where more than 6,600 American POWs were held. He was imprisoned for at least 381 days. Stalag Luft 3 is the same camp made famous by The Great Escape — though Burks’s own breakout happened separately, and with far less Hollywood drama.
He escaped in February 1945, alongside two other pilots. It took them 37 days to reach American lines.
Most men who survived that experience came home and simply tried to move on. Burks did move on — but he moved toward something.
The Path From Prisoner to Federal Marshal
After the war, Charlie worked with the Logansport Police Department for five years before becoming a U.S. Marshal.
He joined the U.S. Marshals in Hammond, Indiana, where he became part of a special operations unit trained to handle the integration of schools. This was not standard law enforcement work. The unit existed precisely because the federal government knew that enforcing Brown v. Board of Education — the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that declared segregated public schools unconstitutional — would require men willing to stand inside angry crowds and not flinch.
Burks was one of those men. He was later assigned to the U.S. Marshals office in New Orleans, where his family lived for 15 years. That assignment would put him at the centre of one of the most photographed moments in American civil rights history.
November 14, 1960 — The Walk That Changed American History
Two schools in New Orleans were ordered to desegregate in the fall of 1960. Six-year-old Ruby Bridges became one of the first African American students to attend a school in the American South, flanked by four federal marshals as she was escorted through angry mobs that threw things and yelled racial slurs at her.
Burks was one of those four marshals.
What Ruby Bridges Saw That Morning
Ruby Bridges later recalled her first impression: “I remember being in the car and the minute we turned the corner, and I saw all those people outside. My first thought was — It’s Mardi Gras today! I’m in a parade.”
Her parents had deliberately not told her what was happening. They didn’t want to frighten her.
Burks never forgot watching her walk. He later said, “She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all ver,y very proud of her.”
Burks and the other marshals escorted Bridges to and from school for several weeks before local police took over. Eventually, ly the crowds dispersed, sed and she no longer needed protection. For that entire first year, Ruby sat alone in her classroom. No other children were permitted to attend with her.
The Norman Rockwell Painting — and the Man Inside It
The first tense days outside the school were captured by Norman Rockwell in a painting that depicts a young Black girl carrying textbooks and a ruler being led by marshals past a wall marked by a splattered tomato and a scrawled racial slur. The painting, The Problem We All Live With, became one of the most recognisable images of the civil rights era.
Charlie came home one night and told his wife Betty: “I saw a picture today that Norman Rockwell painted of Ruby and the four marshals, and I’d sure love to own it.” Norman Rockwell had died the day before. When he came home the next night, he had that picture.
It hung in the hallway of their Indiana home for the rest of his life.
Beyond Ruby Bridges: The Integration Operations Nobody Talks About
The Ruby Bridges escort is the detail that appears in every headline about Charles Burks. It was not, however, the only time he stood between an angry crowd and someone trying to attend school.
Charlie participated in the integrations of the University of Mississippi and universities in both Alabama and Georgia. In total, Burks took part in more than a dozen school integration operations.
That record is almost absent from published coverage of his life. Each of those operations carried the same risk — hostile crowds, the possibility of violence, the weight of federal authority being deployed against years of institutionalised resistance. Burks did this work repeatedly, without seeking recognition for any single instance.
His goal was never glory or recognition. He said he was simply doing his job of protecting those who needed it at the time.
That sentence is worth sitting with. In an era when simply carrying out federal law enforcement duties in the South required genuine courage, Burks consistently described his actions as ordinary. They weren’t.
Fifty Years Later — A Reunion Worth Remembering
On September 5, 2013, Ruby Bridges — now an adult and prominent civil rights advocate — was reunited with Charles Burks at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which was filming the pair for its permanent exhibit called “The Power of Children.” Burks, then 91, was the only one of the four marshals who had escorted Bridges to school still alive.
“Thank you, Charlie, for doing what was right at a time when it might not have been the easiest thing to do,” Bridges told him at the reunion.
“I said to Charlie that he didn’t just help to protect me, but he helped to shape me into the person I am,” she added.
Burks responded: “Like I told my great-grandson, this was one of the highlights of my life.”
At the close of the visit, Charles Burks presented Ruby with his Federal Marshal pin.
When Charlie died in 2017, Ruby Bridges came to his wake. She stood with four marshals around her and visited everyone who came through the door — especially the children. It was a quiet, private gesture that received almost no press coverage. It says more about the depth of that relationship than any news article could.
The Spirit of Justice Award and a Life’s Final Chapter
In 2008, Charlie was presented with the “Spirit of Justice” award — the highest honour given by the Indiana Civil Rights Commission. It came nearly five decades after the events it recognised.
Charles D. “Charlie” Burks passed away on June 19, 2017, at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, following complications from a broken hip. He was 95. He was survived by his wife, Betty, two sons, seven grandchildren, and ten great-grandchildren. He had, in his words, always made “one more takeoff than landing.”
Why Charles Burks Still Matters
There is a version of American history that treats the civil rights movement as a story of icons — a few famous names carrying the weight of change alone. Charles Burks complicates that story in the best possible way.
He was a man who nearly died over Belgium at 22, spent over a year as a prisoner of war, walked to freedom across 37 days of occupied Europe, and then spent the most consequential decades of his life standing between frightened children and furious crowds — not because he sought history, but because it was his job.
He wanted people to know that the Norman Rockwell painting represented much more than the Civil Rights Movement — that there were actual people who had names and families, and that their lives made a difference.
His name was Charles D. Burks. Now you know it.