context of the civil rights movement, segregation and closed society of violent Mississippi. Furthermore, it sparked social change, social justice, equal opportunity and citizenship regardless of race. From 1963 to 1972 Derby served as a SNCC field secretary in various capacities in Jackson, Mississippi, in the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the Poor Peoples' Corporation (PPC), and the Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) Head start Program. During this period she worked on preparations for the Freedom Summer, taught in various educational enrichment programs, and promoted local arts and culture. She also helped incorporate Liberty House Cooperative Marketing, an arm of the PPC. Derby was also involved in the marketing, public relations, and training of these groups. In 1967 she joined Southern Media, Inc., a documentary, photography, an filmmaking group in Jackson, Mississippi, that traveled throughout the state documenting the lives, struggles, initiatives and gains of people in and around the movement. She lectured and exhibited at Jackson State College on African art and culture. Her many "trials and tribulations" in the SNCC and FST in Mississippi are reflected in her independently published book Poetagraphy: Artistic Reflections of a Mississippi Lifeline in Words and Images: 1963–1972 (2019). Further education and achievements Derby left Mississippi in 1972 and focused on African and African-American studies, for which she earned an M.A., as well as a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In 1990, she joined the University System of Georgia at Georgia State University (G.S.U.) as an adjunct associate professor of anthropology and the founding director of the Office of African-American Student Services and Programs (O.A.A.S.S.P.). Her department's achievements included the retention and graduation of a vast number of African-American students, as well as the enhancement of cultural and educational ties between African, Caribbean, Latin and African-American students and the community at large. She also co-founded the Performing and Visual Arts Council (P.V.A.C.) at Georgia State University in 2008. At the end of 2012, Derby retired from Georgia State University after 22 years of service. Derby also taught at the College of Charleston, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin. Photography Derby's father taught her to use a camera. After her arrival in Mississippi in 1963, she began to document the everyday human effort required to live through dramatic events and protests of the civil rights struggle. "Documenting was