Zelma Henderson (February 29, 1920 – May 20, 2008) was the last surviving plaintiff in the 1954 landmark federal school desegregation case, Brown v. Board of Education.
[1] Kansas state law at the time permitted that elementary schools in towns with a population of 15,000 or more could be racially segregated.
[1] As a result, Henderson attended integrated elementary schools in both towns alongside both black and white children.
[3] 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.
"[1][4] 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.
[1] The lawsuit, with Henderson as one of the 13 plaintiffs, was first filed in 1951 in the United States District Court in Kansas.
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.