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.”

Fifty years ago, the city of Little Rock's gradual plan to integrate its schools as part of the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, had gotten off to an extremely bad start. Neither the Governor of Arkansas, an avid segregationist, nor Little Rock's white citizens weren't going to allow Little Rock Central High School to be integrated without a fight.

It took 21 days of trying, but the nine black students selected by the school board for their attendance and grades finally entered their new school for good on September 25, 1957, but only after President Eisenhower deployed federal troops and federalized the Arkansas National Guard, members of which had previously been working, at the governor's bidding, to keep the teenagers out of the building.

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