Early Life
Henderson was born as Zelma Cleota Hurst in Colby, Kansas, on February 29, 1920. Her family, The Hursts, were one of only two African American families living in Colby at the time. Her parents grew wheat and raised cattle for a living. The family moved to Oakley, Kansas, when she was still young.
Kansas state law at the time required that elementary schools in towns with a population of 15,000 or more had to be racially segregated. However, the law did not apply to either Colby or Oakley, since both towns had populations of under 15,000 people. As a result, Henderson attended integrated elementary schools in both towns alongside both black and white children. The law did not apply to Kansas middle schools or high schools, which were integrated throughout the state.
Read more about this topic: Zelma Henderson
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Very early in our children’s lives we will be forced to realize that the “perfect” untroubled life we’d like for them is just a fantasy. In daily living, tears and fights and doing things we don’t want to do are all part of our human ways of developing into adults.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“To quarrel with the uncertainty that besets us in intellectual affairs would be about as reasonable as to object to live one’s life with due thought for the morrow because no man can be sure he will alive an hour hence.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)