One of a handful of black students in her high school near Canton, Ohio, in the 1950s, Delores Henderson was pulled into a joke by a fellow classmate.

The student, who was white, told their history teacher that he and Henderson had married over the weekend. The teacher’s white face turned even paler, and he held the two students after class, where he stated clearly his disapproval of interracial marriage.

“That was my first (encounter) where it was so open with racism,” Henderson said.

She learned then that she’d have to fight for equal treatment for all and pledged that everyone who met her would know “who I was and what I stood for,” she said.

Henderson, principal of St. Paul’s Hazel Park Preparatory Academy, received the Charles L. Hopson Racial Equity Principal Leadership award from the Pacific Educational Group last week in New Orleans. The award caps a career of educational equity work in a city and school system that hadn’t given it much attention until recently.

Henderson recalled a speaker at the start of the 1982 school year who forecast a shift in demographics and encouraged St. Paul Public Schools administrators to begin training their teachers accordingly. Today, with minorities accounting for 76 percent of student enrollment and nearly 73 percent of all students eligible for school lunch subsidies, nearly everything district administrators do is viewed through an “equity lens.”

“We’re doing the work now,” she said.

Henderson is decidedly hands-on, and that goes beyond hugging students in the hallway.

“Her energy and enthusiasm are incredible,” said Christine Osorio, the district’s chief academic officer, who used to be Henderson’s direct supervisor. “She never stops. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

When a child’s grades are slipping, Henderson will call his parents and demand to know why the teacher hadn’t done so first. Now, her teachers are required to make notes on their communications with parents, and Henderson is auditing their logs.

She and her equity team will be training teachers on how to make classes culturally relevant for students. They check lesson plans to make sure teachers are on the right path.

Henderson’s high expectations contribute to high turnover, she admitted — Hazel Park teachers often leave to work elsewhere.

Science teacher Carlottia Davis agreed her principal is tough but said Henderson “makes me better.”

Expectations are high for students, too. As Henderson walks the halls of the school for prekindergarteners through eighth-graders, she compliments a child whose behavior has improved. She asks another if he’s getting his grades up and makes a note to follow up when he says yes.

She recently brought the National Junior Honor Society program to Hazel Park and is working to make Hazel Park an International Baccalaureate school, as well. A longtime educator of gifted and talented students, she said she believes every child is gifted. And she subscribes to Harvard researcher Howard Gardner’s multiple-intelligences theory, which for schools requires finding the learning style that works best for each child.

Henderson has been on the job long enough that she would make more money if she were retired. Next school year will be her 50th, and if Hazel Park gets International Baccalaureate authorization, Henderson said she thinks she will step down.

“I probably will retire from the school district but not from this work,” she said.

Osorio said she doesn’t see how Henderson could quit. “Until the achievement gap is closed, she’s not going to stop working on that,” she said.

Josh Verges can be reached at 651-228-2171. Follow him at twitter.com/ua14.