Zelma Henderson was a beautician who lived in Topeka, Kansas, her entire life. When she died Tuesday at 88 of pancreatic cancer, so did the last living plaintiff in the historic Brown v. Board of Education case.

Henderson joined the case when the NAACP asked 13 local black parents (including Oliver Brown), whose children were being bused to an all-black school across town, to join the case. The rest is history. “None of us knew that this case would be so important and come to the magnitude it has,” Henderson told the Dallas Morning News in 1994. “What little bit I did, I feel I helped the whole nation.”