27 Facts About Doris Derby

Doris Adelaide Derby was an American activist and documentary photographer.

Doris Derby was the adjunct associate professor of anthropology at Georgia State University and the founding director of their Office of African-American Student Services and Programs.

Doris Derby was active in the Mississippi civil rights movement, and her work discusses the themes of race and African-American identity.

Doris Derby was a working member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and co-founder of the Free Southern Theater.

Doris Derby's parents met in New York and married in the mid-1930s.

Doris Derby began to formally study dance while in elementary school and gravitated towards African-centered dance traditions.

Doris Derby received a scholarship to study at the Katherine Dunham African dance classes at the Harlem YMCA.

Doris Derby continued her association with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee while attending Hunter College in New York.

Doris Derby worked primarily with SNCC in New York, Albany, Georgia, and throughout the state of Mississippi.

Doris Derby was approaching her last year in college in 1960 when she visited countries such as Nigeria, France, and Italy.

Doris Derby visited the Navajo Indian Reservation where she saw the economic inequalities the population was experiencing.

Doris Derby's experience moving to the South as a native northerner sparked and ignited her.

Doris Derby made many contributions during her time at Tougaloo College with John O'Neal, another SNCC worker on the literacy project as well as Gilbert Moses, a journalist for the Jackson Free Press.

Doris Derby saw a need for the creation of a cultural artistic tool that could be used to involve, inspire, enlighten, and galvanize black people to critically think and create for themselves.

From 1963 to 1972 Doris Derby served as a SNCC field secretary in various capacities in Jackson, Mississippi, in the Council of Federated Organizations, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, the Poor Peoples' Corporation, and the Child Development Group of Mississippi Head start Program.

Doris Derby helped incorporate Liberty House Cooperative Marketing, an arm of the PPC.

Doris Derby was involved in the marketing, public relations, and training of these groups.

Doris Derby lectured and exhibited at Jackson State College on African art and culture.

Doris Derby taught at the College of Charleston, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin.

Doris Derby's photographs have been shown at the Smithsonian Institution, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Illinois, the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, California.

Doris Derby's photographs have been exhibited in Atlanta, Georgia, at the High Museum, the Hammonds House Museum, Spelman College, the Fulton County Southwest Arts Center, and the Auburn Avenue Research Library.

In 2020, Doris Derby's work was included in an exhibition of civil rights art at the Turner Contemporary in London.

Doris Derby lived in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, actor Bob Banks, whom she married in 1995.

Doris Derby died on March 28,2022, in Atlanta from cancer at the age of 82.

Doris Derby was interviewed on WSB-TV, Channel 2 Atlanta, for a segment shown on the anniversary, as well as a commemorative special program that was aired the day before.

Doris Derby is one of the 52 contributors to the book Hands on the Freedom Plow - Personal Accounts of 52 Women in SNCC.

On October 6,2011, Doris Derby received the 26th Governor's Award in the Humanities in Atlanta for documenting and preserving images and stories enabling current and future generations to learn about the civil rights movement and social change in the Deep South.