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 life, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“Why not walk in the aura of magic that gives to the small things of life their uniqueness and importance? Why not befriend a toad today?”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)