Barbara Henderson, who became the first chair of the Norman Human Rights Commission and spent decades fighting for civil rights in a city that was a sundown town when she arrived, died Aug. 29. She was 92.

Henderson and her husband, George Henderson, were the first Black couple to purchase a home in Norman. They moved from Detroit in 1967 with their seven children and George's mother after he accepted a teaching position at the University of Oklahoma, where he became the third full-time Black professor, the OU Daily reported.

Norman was a sundown town until 1967. A covenant prevented realtors and landlords from selling or renting to Black residents. A group of realtors defied the covenant and sold the couple a house on Osborne Drive, according to a 2011 Oklahoma Historical Society interview with George Henderson cited by the OU Daily.

The Hendersons lived in that same house for nearly six decades.

As the commission's first chair in the early 1970s, Barbara Henderson's work helped open housing and apartment complexes across the city to Black residents, according to George Henderson. She became the first recipient of the Norman Human Rights Award in 1985.

Before Norman, the Hendersons were deeply involved in Detroit's civil rights movement, working alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. George Henderson recalled during an April 2025 Legacy Lecture at OU that he met Parks when they judged a neighborhood beautification contest. Barbara had met Parks in a grocery store three weeks earlier.

The couple met at Michigan State in 1951, when Barbara Beard was a first-year student and George was a sophomore. Only about 100 of the university's 12,500 students were Black at the time. They married Aug. 9, 1952, and celebrated their 74th wedding anniversary on Aug. 9.

The Henderson home on Osborne Drive became the first social setting where Black OU students could express themselves freely, especially after the newly formed Afro-American Student Union faced a hostile reception on campus.

On the night King was assassinated, George Henderson pulled over and cried when the news broke on the radio. He returned home to find Barbara and the children mourning in front of the television. She had already calmed them down. The family resolved that night to keep speaking out, George Henderson said in the 2011 Oklahoma Historical Society interview.

George Henderson, 94, wrote in a Facebook post Friday, Sept. 4, that Barbara had been his wife, best friend and the matriarch of their family. At his 2003 Oklahoma Hall of Fame induction, he called her the most central figure in his life, saying he probably would not have come to Oklahoma and certainly would not have stayed without her love, approval and encouragement.

The couple's legacy at OU lives on through the Henderson Scholars Program, which provides access to higher education. Miles Kelly, the program's director, said in a statement to the OU Daily that Barbara's legacy is deeply connected to the program's values of courage, compassion and service. The Henderson Community Pillar Award, which honors community impact, is also named after the couple.

At a Norman City Council meeting during Black History Month in February 2025, George Henderson credited Barbara's determination to stay in Norman, recalling her words: "We came and we leave when we're ready to leave, and this will be our pledge to ourselves and to our children."

No memorial service details have been announced.