(ap) The last surviving plaintiff in Topeka’s Brown v. Board of Education case that led to the landmark ruling that outlawed school desegregation has died at 88. Zelma Henderson died Tuesday in Topeka, six weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 1950 she signed onto litigation on behalf of her children challenging Topeka’s segregated schools. In all, 13 black parents, including the Rev. Oliver Brown, took part in the federal court case. The plaintiffs lost in U.S. District Court, but the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, along with similar cases from Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware. The high court’s unanimous ruling overturning school segregation came on May 17, 1954. As a child in the 1920s and ’30s, Henderson had attended desegregated schools in the western Kansas town of Oakley. She was disgusted when she learned her own children would be required to attend segregated schools in Topeka. Kansas state law permitted segregated elementary schools in towns with at least 15,000 residents. Her children attended an all-black school that was 10 blocks farther away from their home than a whites-only school. “I wanted my children to know all races like I did,” Henderson told The Associated Press in 2004. “It means a lot to a person’s outlook on life. No inferiority complex at all, that’s what I wanted for my children as far as race was concerned.” Cheryl Brown Henderson, a daughter of plaintiff Oliver Brown and president of the Brown Foundation, said Zelma Henderson was an inspiration during the 14-year push to open the Brown v. Board National Historic Site in a formerly segregated school building. Oliver Brown was involved in the lawsuit on behalf of his oldest daughter, Linda; Cheryl was too young to be part of it. Zelma Henderson and Cheryl Brown Henderson weren’t related, said Dennis Vasquez, superintendent of the historic site operated by the National Park Service. “Her passing is a rather large milestone in the history of the case and that period of our history. It puts it in more of a historical perspective because there are no longer any living plaintiffs in the Topeka case,” Vasquez said.

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