He served two years in the U.S. Army towards the end of the Second World War, and then enrolled at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, where he earned a bachelor's degree in English and sociology with high honors in 1949.
He went on to pursue graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin, being awarded a master's degree in English in 1950.
In 1962 he took an appointment as chair of the English department at Morehouse, and from 1969 for two years was as a senior research fellow at the Institute for the Black World in Atlanta, before in 1971 taking on professorship at Howard University in Washington, D.C., teaching in the departments of English and African American Studies.
Henderson's 1973 book Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music as Poetic Reference[4] is regarded as a seminal work that has been "heralded as the first formalized articulation of a theoretical understanding of African-American poetry and sparked new debate and dialogue in the world of African-American literature.
"[3] Henderson retired in 1992 and died aged 71 at his home in Langley Park, Maryland, on January 7, 1997.