Doris Adelaide Derby (1939 - 2022)

Born 11 Nov 1939 in New York, United States

Ancestors

Died 28 Mar 2022 at age 82 in Mississippi, United States

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Biography

Doris Derby is Notable.

Dr. Doris Derby was a civil rights activist, photographer, and professor of anthropology with a focus on African-American studies. Her photographs of civil rights struggles have been in many exhibits across the United States.

Dr. Derby's New York Times newspaper online obituary said: "In hundreds of images, Dr. Derby captured Black people engaged in the kind of civic life that had long been denied them in the American South. And her photos presented a detailed history of the civil rights movement’s grass-roots efforts to empower Black people in all areas — economically, politically, socially and physically."

"Mississippi was completely segregated when Dr. Derby and other young civil rights workers arrived in the early 1960s — she was just 24 — and their work was extremely dangerous. Rifles were kept at the Head Start centers, frequent targets of white vigilantes. "

"Dr. Derby was raised to social activism: A grandparent had started a chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. in Bangor, Maine, and her father had founded an organization to promote the careers of Black civil servants. She was also an artist interested in her African heritage — she painted, she danced — and she planned to pursue a career in cultural anthropology, researching African imagery around the world. One summer during college, she traveled to Nigeria."

"She married Robert A. Banks, an actor and voice-over artist, in 1995. They were both salsa enthusiasts. Her husband survives her, as does a sister, Pauline Roland Scott."

Note that she is enumerated in the 1940 census cited below at the top of a new page. This seems to have caused her to be separated in the index from her parents, who are listed at the bottom of the previous page (image #10 of 28).

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Derby

• https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/arts/doris-derby-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

• "United States Census, 1940," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KQ1B-55G : 7 January 2021), Doris Derby in household of Paline Derby, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, United States; citing enumeration district (ED) 24-1151, sheet 6A, line 2, family 95, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 1940, NARA digital publication T627. Records of the Bureau of the Census, 1790 - 2007, RG 29. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012, roll 2576.