Derby, Doris Adelaide, 1939-2002

Doris Adelaide Derby (1939-2014) was an African American civil rights activist, photographer, and educator. Derby spent her early life in New York City and attended Hunter College. She became involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963, Derby moved to Mississippi to teach in an adult literacy program run by SNCC at Tougaloo College in Jackson. At Tougaloo College she co-founded the Free Southern Theater, a community theater group that traveled throughout the state. Derby remained in Mississippi until 1972 and worked with many organizations devoted to improving the economic and social conditions of African Americans in the South, including the Poor People's Corporation and the Child Development Group of Mississippi. In 1967 Derby joined Southern Media, Incorporated, a documentary photography and filmmaking group in Jackson, Mississippi. Derby used photography to document Black life in Mississippi and the work of civil rights organizations.

Derby received a Master's Degree (1975) and Ph.D. (1980) from the University of Illinois in anthropology, with a concentration in African and African American Studies. She taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1990, Derby became a adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Georgia State University (Atlanta, Georgia) and founding director of the Office of African-American Student Services and Programs (OAASSP). Derby married actor Robert Banks in 1995.

Derby's photographs have been exhibited throughout the United States. She has also published two books, Poetagraphy: Artistic Reflections of a Mississippi Lifeline in Words and Images, 1963-1972 (2019) and A Civil Rights Journey (2021).