Rosetta "Rose" McKinley Henderson was born to William and Arvie McKinley in Fairhope, Alabama on December 8, 1932. One of sixteen children, she attended the Anna T. Jeanes school (pictured) and the Baldwin County Training School.
With such a large family living under segregation in rural Alabama, Henderson experienced her share of difficulties early on. Schools were not required to feed students and Henderson's family could not afford to send their children to school with lunch money every day. Many low-income families in the area had small gardens which provided fresh vegetables for family meals. If they were lucky enough to have extra produce in their gardens, Henderson and other students would bring them to the school cook who turned the vegetables into a soup. Unfortunately, this also meant that on days when there were no extra vegetables, some students would not eat until dinnertime.
Despite the hardships she experienced, Rosetta Henderson excelled in school, especially science. She was determined to go to college even though her father thought the family couldn’t afford it and her White employer tried to persuade her that she did not need to study any further.
While in college, she received monetary support from her older sister, Edith Rasberry, who Henderson said was “the only African American bail bonds-woman in the State of Michigan.” In addition, she worked at the college library to support herself.
In this clip, she discusses her neighborhood growing up in Fairhope, Alabama, along with a few of her experiences in elementary and high school:
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