Ruby Bridges will speak at a sold-out town hall at Booker High School in Sarasota on Nov. 12. The campus once served as Sarasota County's only high school for Black students.

The event, called Walk Forward: The Ruby Bridges Sarasota Initiative, is scheduled from 5 to 6 p.m. on Nov. 12 at the VPA Auditorium, 3201 N. Orange Ave., according to the initiative's official website. A Your Sun report listed the date as Nov. 11; the initiative's own page and SRQ Daily both list Nov. 12. Tickets are sold out.

Registration opens at 4:15 p.m. Organizers ask attendees to allow extra time for parking.

Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault will moderate the town hall, according to SRQ Daily. Hunter-Gault, a Peabody and Emmy award winner who lives part of the year in Sarasota, was one of two students who desegregated the University of Georgia in 1961. She spent decades covering civil rights and African affairs for PBS, CNN and NPR.

Bridges was 6 when she became the first Black child to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960. Escorted by federal marshals, she walked past hostile crowds each day. Norman Rockwell depicted the scene in his painting "The Problem We All Live With."

Bridges went on to found the Ruby Bridges Foundation. Her children's book, "Dear Ruby, Hear Our Hearts," is a New York Times bestseller.

The initiative's chair, Walter Gilbert, said in a news release that the idea began years ago when his granddaughter portrayed Bridges during a program honoring historic Black trailblazers. "Seeing her learn about Ruby's extraordinary courage inspired a dream to one day bring Ms. Bridges to Sarasota," Gilbert said.

Organizers chose Booker High School for its deep ties to Sarasota's civil rights history. The school is named for Emma E. Booker, a pioneer Black educator who taught at the city's public school for Black children in the 1910s. Booker High graduated its first senior class in 1935, according to the school's history page.

As the county's only school for African American students, Booker played a central role in the integration battles of the 1960s. In the 1967-68 school year, the district shut down Booker High and forced its students into previously all-white schools. Residents in the Newtown community boycotted and set up "freedom schools" in local churches.

The school reopened in 1970 and later launched the county's first magnet program in the visual and performing arts.

Net proceeds from the initiative will go to two Sarasota nonprofits: Embracing Our Differences, which focuses on art and education, and the Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition, which preserves African American heritage in the region. Embracing Our Differences serves as the initiative's nonprofit fiscal agent.

Sponsors include the Community Foundation of Sarasota County, the Gulf Coast Community Foundation, Frank and Katherine Martucci, SRQ Strong, Project Pride, the Selby Foundation and the Education Foundation of Sarasota County.

Local students will take part in a Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day as part of the initiative. A private VIP reception is also planned alongside the town hall. For details, visit the initiative's website at engage.embracingourdifferences.org/ruby-bridges/.