Henderson, Zelma

▪ 2009

Zelma Cleota Hurst 

      American civil rights figure

born Feb. 29, 1920, Colby, Kan.

died May 20, 2008, Topeka, Kan.

was the last surviving plaintiff in the 1954 landmark case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional. In 1950, upset that her two young children were being forced to attend a segregated school, Henderson, a beautician in Topeka, agreed to join a class-action lawsuit organized by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to challenge the segregation law. Henderson served as a plaintiff in the suit with 12 other local black parents. In later years she gave numerous interviews in which she described her participation in the historic case.

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