one of the things I was destined to do from an early age", she later explained. "I knew that we did not have our history in history books and I knew we had a lot of achievements. I wanted to make sure that I recorded whatever i could, whatever was historical and happening around me". Derby exhibited her photographs both locally and nationally. Her 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. Derby's photographs have also 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. As well, her photographs have been exhibited at the Art, Design and Architecture Museum, UC Santa Barbara, the Jackson State University and Margaret Walker Alexander Center Art Galleries and the George & Leah McKenna Museum of African American Art in New Orleans. Other exhibits displayed in Atlanta were at Georgia State University, in the Gallery Lounge and The Ernest G. Welch Gallery. In 2009, her work was part of an exhibit, "Road to Freedom", at the High Museum in Atlanta, which explored the role of photography in the civil rights movement. Derby's work can be found in the following: Polly Greenberg's The Devil Has Slippery Shoes, 1990; Clarissa Myrick-Harris's Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearer, 1941-1965, 1993; Deborah Willis' Reflections in Black - A History of Black Photographers, 2000; The Nation's Longest Struggle - Looking Back on the Modern Civil Rights Movement, D.C. Everest Oral History Project, 2013. Her many "trials and tribulations" in the literacy and theater projects are reflected in her self-published book Poetagraphy: Artistic Reflections of a Mississippi Lifeline in Words and Images: 1963 - 1972. In 2020, Derby's work was included in an exhibition of civil rights art at the Turner Contemporary in London. We Will Walk: Art and Resistance in the American South included sculptural assemblages, paintings and quilts by more than 20 African American artists from Alabama and surrounding states. In 2021, a collection of her images from the south, with transcripts of conversations with her collaborator Hannah Collins, was published as A Civil Rights Journey. Personal life Derby lived in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, actor Bob Banks, whom she