Barbara Sears Rockefeller, 91, a Pennsylvania coal miner's daughter who married one of the richest men in America and, after their divorce six years later, won a settlement regarded as a record in its day, died Monday in Little Rock, Ark.

Familiarly known as Bobo, Rockefeller was the former wife of a governor of Arkansas and the mother of a lieutenant governor. From 1948 to 1954, she was married to Winthrop Rockefeller, who went on to serve two terms as governor, from 1967 to 1971. He was a grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the Standard Oil founder.

The couple's only child, Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, was lieutenant governor of Arkansas from 1996 until his death in 2006.

Zelma Henderson, 88, the last surviving plaintiff in the Topeka., Kan., Brown vs. Board of Education case, which led to the historic 1954 Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregation in public schools, died Tuesday in Topeka.

In 1950, Henderson signed on to the litigation on behalf of her children challenging Topeka's segregated schools. 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 a segregated school in Topeka that was 10 blocks farther from their home than a whites-only school.

While Henderson was the last surviving Topeka plaintiff, there still are some plaintiffs from other state cases consolidated with Brown.

NEWS SERVICES