Zelma Henderson
Encyclopedia
Zelma Henderson was the last surviving plaintiff
in the 1954 landmark federal
school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education
. The case outlawed segregation
nationwide in all of the United States
' public schools. The ruling served as a harbinger of the American Civil Rights Movement and paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964
, which outlawed segregation in all public facilities.
, on February 29, 1920. Her family, The Hursts, were one of only two African American
families living in Colby at the time. Her parents grew wheat
and raised cattle
for a living. The family moved to Oakley, Kansas
, when she was still young.
Kansas
state law
at the time required that elementary schools in towns with a population of 15,000 or more had to be racially segregated
. However, the law did not apply to either Colby or Oakley, since both towns had populations of under 15,000 people. As a result, Henderson attended integrated elementary schools in both towns alongside both black and white children. The law did not apply to Kansas middle school
s or high schools, which were integrated
throughout the state.
and segregation
when she moved to the city of Topeka, Kansas
, in 1940. She studied to become a cosmetologist at a segregated school, the Kansas Vocational School. She was known to be a very good typist, but could not find a clerical
position in the city due to her race. She was instead offered domestic work instead, such as a housekeeper or maid.
Henderson married her husband, Andrew Henderson, in 1943. She opened her own beauty salon
within her home soon after her marriage. The Hendersons had two children, Donald Henderson and Vicki Henderson, who were bused to a segregated, all black school on the other side of the city of Topeka. This discrimination angered Henderson, who had been educated in integrated schools as a child. She later told the Boston Globe in an interview
, "I knew what integration was and how well it worked and couldn’t understand why we were separated here in Topeka."
Henderson became involved in the legal fight against the city's segregated schools in 1950, when the local Topeka chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) began preparing for a class action suit against the Topeka public school system. The NAACP asked 13 parents of African American public school students, which included Oliver Brown
and 12 women, including Zelma Henderson, to serve as plaintiffs in the case. Henderson quickly agreed. In the case, whose full name was Oliver L. Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Henderson was the last et al. listed on the plaintiff's side of the original case.
The lawsuit
, with Henderson as one of the 13 plaintiffs, was first filed in 1951 in the United States District Court
in Kansas. The U.S. District Court ruled against the plaintiffs, citing the 1896 "separate but equal
" ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson
.
The 1951 ruling was appealed to the United States Supreme Court after it was combined with four smiliar cases originating from the District of Columbia, Delaware
, Virginia
and South Carolina
under the shortended case name of Brown v. Board of Education
. The United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down school segregation in its decision on May 17, 1954. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the unanimous majority decision, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," in agreement with Henderson and the other plaintiff's original suit.
Henderson appeared in numerous events commemorating the decision throughout her life. In a 1994 Dallas Morning News interview, she told the interviewing reporter, "None of us knew that this case would be so important and come to the magnitude it has. What little bit I did, I feel I helped the whole nation."
on May 20, 2008. She was the last survivor of the original Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case.
She was survived by her son, Donald, five grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren. Her husband, Andrew Henderson, died in 1971 and their daughter, Vicki, died in 1984.
Plaintiff
A plaintiff , also known as a claimant or complainant, is the term used in some jurisdictions for the party who initiates a lawsuit before a court...
in the 1954 landmark federal
United States federal courts
The United States federal courts make up the judiciary branch of federal government of the United States organized under the United States Constitution and laws of the federal government.-Categories:...
school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
. The case outlawed segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
nationwide in all of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' public schools. The ruling served as a harbinger of the American Civil Rights Movement and paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
, which outlawed segregation in all public facilities.
Early life
Henderson was born as Zelma Cleota Hurst in Colby, KansasColby, Kansas
Colby is a city in and the county seat of Thomas County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 5,387.-History:...
, on February 29, 1920. Her family, The Hursts, were one of only two African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
families living in Colby at the time. Her parents grew wheat
Wheat
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...
and raised cattle
Cattle
Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...
for a living. The family moved to Oakley, Kansas
Oakley, Kansas
Oakley is a city in Gove, Logan, and Thomas counties in the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 2,045. It is the county seat of Logan County.-Geography:...
, when she was still young.
Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
state law
State law
In the United States, state law is the law of each separate U.S. state, as passed by the state legislature and adjudicated by state courts. It exists in parallel, and sometimes in conflict with, United States federal law. These disputes are often resolved by the federal courts.-See also:*List of U.S...
at the time required that elementary schools in towns with a population of 15,000 or more had to be racially segregated
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
. However, the law did not apply to either Colby or Oakley, since both towns had populations of under 15,000 people. As a result, Henderson attended integrated elementary schools in both towns alongside both black and white children. The law did not apply to Kansas middle school
Middle school
Middle School and Junior High School are levels of schooling between elementary and high schools. Most school systems use one term or the other, not both. The terms are not interchangeable...
s or high schools, which were integrated
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
throughout the state.
Brown v. Board of Education
Hurst encountered much more blatant discriminationDiscrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
and segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
when she moved to the city of Topeka, Kansas
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
, in 1940. She studied to become a cosmetologist at a segregated school, the Kansas Vocational School. She was known to be a very good typist, but could not find a clerical
Clerk
Clerk, the vocational title, commonly refers to a white-collar worker who conducts general office or, in some instances, sales tasks. It is also occasionally used to refer to third-year medical students completing a medical clerkship. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record...
position in the city due to her race. She was instead offered domestic work instead, such as a housekeeper or maid.
Henderson married her husband, Andrew Henderson, in 1943. She opened her own beauty salon
Beauty salon
A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment dealing with cosmetic treatments for men and women...
within her home soon after her marriage. The Hendersons had two children, Donald Henderson and Vicki Henderson, who were bused to a segregated, all black school on the other side of the city of Topeka. This discrimination angered Henderson, who had been educated in integrated schools as a child. She later told the Boston Globe in an interview
Interview
An interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...
, "I knew what integration was and how well it worked and couldn’t understand why we were separated here in Topeka."
Henderson became involved in the legal fight against the city's segregated schools in 1950, when the local Topeka chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, usually abbreviated as NAACP, is an African-American civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909. Its mission is "to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to...
(NAACP) began preparing for a class action suit against the Topeka public school system. The NAACP asked 13 parents of African American public school students, which included Oliver Brown
Oliver Brown (civil rights)
Oliver L. Brown was the plaintiff in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. The Court overturned the doctrine of separate but equal for public schools....
and 12 women, including Zelma Henderson, to serve as plaintiffs in the case. Henderson quickly agreed. In the case, whose full name was Oliver L. Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Henderson was the last et al. listed on the plaintiff's side of the original case.
The lawsuit
Lawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
, with Henderson as one of the 13 plaintiffs, was first filed in 1951 in the United States District Court
United States district court
The United States district courts are the general trial courts of the United States federal court system. Both civil and criminal cases are filed in the district court, which is a court of law, equity, and admiralty. There is a United States bankruptcy court associated with each United States...
in Kansas. The U.S. District Court ruled against the plaintiffs, citing the 1896 "separate but equal
Separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified systems of segregation. Under this doctrine, services, facilities and public accommodations were allowed to be separated by race, on the condition that the quality of each group's public facilities was to...
" ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
.
The 1951 ruling was appealed to the United States Supreme Court after it was combined with four smiliar cases originating from the District of Columbia, Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
under the shortended case name of Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
. The United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down school segregation in its decision on May 17, 1954. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the unanimous majority decision, "Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal," in agreement with Henderson and the other plaintiff's original suit.
Henderson appeared in numerous events commemorating the decision throughout her life. In a 1994 Dallas Morning News interview, she told the interviewing reporter, "None of us knew that this case would be so important and come to the magnitude it has. What little bit I did, I feel I helped the whole nation."
Death
Zelma Henderson died in Topeka, Kansas, at the age of 88 of pancreatic cancerPancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer refers to a malignant neoplasm of the pancreas. The most common type of pancreatic cancer, accounting for 95% of these tumors is adenocarcinoma, which arises within the exocrine component of the pancreas. A minority arises from the islet cells and is classified as a...
on May 20, 2008. She was the last survivor of the original Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case.
She was survived by her son, Donald, five grandchildren and fifteen great-grandchildren. Her husband, Andrew Henderson, died in 1971 and their daughter, Vicki, died in 1984.