SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C11
before what appeared to be an
explosive device could detonate.
After a decade in the South, Dr.
Derby enrolled at the University
of Illinois, receiving a master’s
degree in 1975 and a PhD in 1980,
both in anthropology. She spe-
cialized in African American
studies.
“A s a youngster growing up in
New York,” she said in an inter-
view with the website Alternate-
Roots, “I saw my mission in life as
one who would identify, docu-
ment, associate with and learn
from Black artists, dancers, writ-
ers, musicians, actors, poets and
historians to gather information
and get it out to our people in
whatever form I could because it
was sorely lacking in our commu-
nity and wasn’t r eadily available in
mainstream textbooks, maga-
zines, newspapers, movies or on
TV.”
She spent much of her aca-
demic career at Georgia State
University in Atlanta, where she
led the office of African American
student services and programs.
Dr. Derby married Robert
Banks in 1995. Besides her hus-
band, of East Point, Ga., survivors
include a sister.
Last year, Dr. Derby published
a book of her photography, “A
Civil Rights Journey.”
In one of her images, an Afri-
can American woman in saddle
shoes is depicted hanging laun-
dry on a porch, the breeze almost
visible in a white sheet billowing
along the line.
Reflecting years later on the
woman in the picture, Dr. Derby
remarked, “I would say that she
was glad that we were there
representing the struggle for
equality, the struggle to... help
her improve her lot in life.”ease and comfort” seen in her
pictures, he said, is something
“an outsider wouldn’t normally
be able to get.”
Doris Adelaide Derby was born
in the Bronx on Nov. 11, 1939. Her
mother was a homemaker and
later an educator at a school for
deaf students. Her father, in addi-
tion to his civil service job, sup-
ported his children as a cabinet-
maker.
He was also an amateur pho-
tographer, Dr. Derby recalled,
and gave her a Kodak Brownie
camera when she was in elemen-
tary school.
Both of Dr. Derby’s parents
encouraged her interest in the
arts, which led her to lessons with
Katherine Dunham, an ac-
claimed dancer and choreogra-
pher who helped introduce Black
cultural traditions to modern
dance.
Dr. Derby was 16 when she
joined the NAACP. She enrolled at
Hunter College in New York City,
where she majored in elementary
education and anthropology and
traveled to Nigeria before gradu-
ating in 1962. She was working in
Yonkers, N.Y., when the civil rights
activist Bob Moses recruited her to
SNCC.
“It was very dangerous, with
firebombings of houses and shoot-
outs,” she recalled. “There were
mass arrests of local Black men,
women and children, as well as of
White and Black civil r ights volun-
teers.”
Once during her stay in Missis-
sippi, Dr. Derby was driving past
a church that housed a Head Start
program for Black preschoolers.
She noticed a flame at t he end of a
wire leading to the church. She
and the others in the car jumped
out and extinguished the flamecooperative, mothers tending to
their young ones and children
going about their childhood.
The subjects of her portraits
included boxer Muhammad Ali,
writer Alice Walker and activist
Fannie Lou Hamer. They also
included unsung activists doing
the behind-the-scenes work that
powered large-scale change.
“I wanted to show who the
people are, where they lived, and
what they were doing. They were
the basis of the success of the civil
rights movement,” she told an
interviewer with the University of
Illinois. “Many activities and ini-
tiatives, including forming co-
operatives, were a part of that
whole movement. Anything you
did to challenge the status quo
was considered political.”
“Outsiders often see those who
are out there protesting, meeting
with officials, or scenes from a
tragedy — which all are very
important,” she continued. “But
not everybody was involved out-
wardly in that part. My focus was
to document Black people who
were engaged in the struggle for
equality and justice for all. To
depict the life-giving force of the
Black community keeping on.
Even though they face poverty
and injustice, they’re surviving,
they’re living.”
After being largely overlooked
for decades, Dr. Derby’s photog-
raphy has been displayed in re-
cent years at institutions includ-
ing the Smithsonian’s National
Museum of African American
History and Culture and the High
Museum of Art in Atlanta. Grego-
ry Harris, the curator of photog-
raphy at the High Museum, re-
marked in an interview that “as a
Black woman, her perspective is
very unusual.” The “element ofatrical troupe that performed free
of charge before largely Black au-
diences.
During the course of that work,
she documented Black life as a
photographer with a project
known as Southern Media.
“Her images stood in stark con-
trast to other civil rights images
made at the time because she
looked at segregation and despair
and joy and family at the same
time — and used the stories that
emphasized a sense of hope,” said
Deborah Willis, a professor of
photography at New York Univer-
sity, where she is also director of
the Center for Black Visual Cul-
ture/Institute of African Ameri-
can Affairs.
Dr. Derby had what she called a
“broad” concept of civil rights,
instilled in her by her parents and
grandparents. Her grandmother
had been an early member of the
NAACP. Her father, trained as an
engineer but unable to find work
in the field because he was Black,
had become a civil servant and
fought discrimination in govern-
ment employment.
In her own activism, Dr. Derby
sought to overturn not only the
official laws that disenfranchised
and disempowered African
Americans, but also the en-
trenched social patterns that lim-
ited their educational, economic
and cultural opportunities.
She brought an equally broad
vision to her civil rights photogra-
phy. She documented the funeral
of four girls killed in the 1963
bombing of the 16th Street Bap-
tist Church in Birmingham, Ala.,
and the funeral of the Rev. Martin
Luther King Jr. after his assassi-
nation in 1968. She also photo-
graphed sharecroppers working
the land, seamstresses at a s ewingBY EMILY LANGERDoris Derby, who was one of
the few Black women to chronicle
the civil rights movement
through photography, amassing
an archive of thousands of images
that reveal in poignant intimacy
the lives of the people for whom
the movement was fought, died
March 28 at a hospice center in
Newnan, Ga. She was 82.
The cause was complications
from cancer, said Charmaine
Minniefield, an artist who de-
scribed Dr. Derby as a mentor.
Dr. Derby was teaching el-
ementary school in New York in
1963 when she uprooted her life
to join the civil rights movement
in the South. She was compelled
to go there, she said, by the
images she saw in the news of
violent attacks on peaceful pro-
testers.
“The police had German shep-
herd dogs and billy clubs, and
they were blasting people with
fire hoses,” she told a publication
of the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, her gradu-
ate school alma mater. “I said, ‘Oh
my goodness, if people there can
subject themselves to these life-
threatening actions, the least I
can do is go t o Mississippi and use
my God-given talents.’ ”
Dr. Derby went to Mississippi as
a field secretary for the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Com-
mittee, planning to give one year
of her life to the movement. In the
end, she stayed for nearly a dec-
ade. She registered African Ameri-
cans to vote, taught adult literacy
courses and organized farming
cooperatives to give Black share-
croppers independence from
White landowners. With several
other activists, she founded a the-
DORIS DERBY, 82
P hotographer documented
Black life in civil rights era
obituaries
PHOTOS BY DORIS DERBY/MACK BOOKSClockwise from above: Fannie Lou Hamer, after speaking at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago; a quilting cooperative in Beaufort, S.C., in 1972; the Grand
Marie Farmers Cooperative in Lafayette, La., in 1969. Dr. Derby went to Mississippi from New York in 1963 for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She planned
to give a year of her life to the movement but stayed almost a decade. She registered African Americans to vote, taught adult literacy courses and organized cooperatives to
give Black sharecroppers independence from White landowners. “I wanted to show who the people are, where they lived, and what they were doing,” she later said.
DEATH NOTICEALLEY
MARDOBLEIERALLEY(Age80)
MardoAlleydiedpeacefullyin the Cherry-
daleHealthand RehabilitationCenteron
Monday,March28, 2022.Her husbandof
45 years,Frank, was at her side.The cause
of her deathwas heartfailurefollowinga
severestroke.
Mardowas bornin Birmingham,Alabama,
on January25, 1942,to Edwinand Barba-
ra RuthBleier,now deceased.She grew
up in Nashville,Tennessee,and Tuscaloo-
sa, Alabama,and graduatedin 1962from
the Universityof Alabama.Shemadea
careerin the brokerage industryuntilher
marriagein 1977to LTCFrank Alley.They
madeahomein Arlington,Virginiawhere
she workedas atechnicaleditoruntilshe
retiredand devotedher timeto beingan
Armywife.
In additionto her husband,Mardois sur-
vivedby abrother,EdwinBleier(Billie)of
MinorHill, Tennessee;asister,Judy Cincot-
ta (Larry)of OklahomaCity,Oklahoma;and
numerousniecesand nephews.
Intermentwill be at ArlingtonNational
Cemeteryat alater time.BELL
JERRYKENNETHBELL
Of Easton,MD diedon April4, 2022.Born
in Washington,DC on May10, 1936.He
servedin the US Air Force from 1956 un-
til 1960,and thenworkedfor the Federal
Governmentuntil 1992 whenhe retired
fromthe Officeof PersonnelManagement.
Gravesideservicewithmilitaryhonorswill
takeplaceat the MarylandEasternShore
Veterans Cemeteryin Hurlock,MD.For a
completeobituarypleasevisit:
http://www.fhnfuneralhome.comBREEDIN
JAMESBREEDINJR.
James“Desso”Breedin,Jr (Jimmy)passed
awayon Monday,March28, 2022.He is
survivedby his belovedwife,Rebecca
Gray-Breedin;sister,Magdalena(Ronald)
Green;brother,Fletcher(Rejeana)Tinsley;
and ahost of threestep-children,three
step-grandchildren, 12 nieces and 11
nephews.Serviceswill be held on Wednes-
day,April 13 at 11 a.m.at MarshallMarch
Funeral Homein Suitland,MD,with visita-
tion at 10 a.m. IntermentLincolnMemorial
Cemetery.CEMETERYLOTS
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