The Journal of African American History announces the death of Derryn E. Moten, assistant book review editor.
Dedicated to the full and wholesome study of African American, labor, and public history, among other subjects, Derryn Moten was the quintessential scholar-activist. Born and reared in Gary, Indiana, he earned a BA degree in English from Howard University, an MS degree in library and information science from Catholic University of America, and both MA and PhD degrees in American Studies from the University of Iowa. His 1997 dissertation, “A Gruesome Warning to Black Girls: The August 16, 1912 Execution of Virginia Christian,” inspired Ross Howell Jr.’s novel, Forsaken (2016).
Moten joined the faculty of Alabama State University (ASU) in 1996. He instructed courses in the Department of Humanities, achieved tenure, and rose to the rank of professor. After nearly two decades of service at ASU, Moten became chair of the Department of History and Political Science, a position he occupied until his retirement in 2024. Besides those duties, Moten headed the ASU Faculty Senate, was co-president of the ASU chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Faculty-Staff Alliance, and served as vice chair of the AFT Higher Education Policy and Planning Council. Moten also held leadership positions in the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, or AFL-CIO.
Moten was a sought-after speaker and writer whose specialties spanned myriad topics and geographies. In 2018, he helped resurrect Lawrence D. Reddick’s 1959 monograph, Crusader Without Violence. The first published biography of the Rev. Martin L. King Jr., Crusader Without Violence had been out of print for years before Moten’s work. NewSouth Books published the 60th anniversary of the monograph, for which Moten wrote the introduction.
While working on Crusader Without Violence in 2018, Moten spearheaded a campaign that resulted in Alabama’s interim education superintendent, Edward R. Richardson, expunging the records of nine former Alabama State College (ASC) students. In 1960, Alabama governor John Patterson and members of the state education board ordered the expulsion of the students for helping to organize and participating in the first student sit-in demonstration against Jim and Jane Crowism in the lower South. Richardson also expunged the records of ASC faculty members and student advocates Mary F. Burks, Jo Ann G. Robinson, Lawrence Reddick, and Robert E. Williams.
In 2022, Moten along with Jonathan Entin at the Case Western University School of Law encouraged US President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on ASC alumnus and pioneering civil rights attorney Fred D. Gray Sr. Moten attended the bestowal ceremony in Washington, DC. In future years, Moten spoke often about those experiences as he continued to educate students, chair an academic department, advocate for labor equality, speak, and write.
Deeply respectful of Carter G. Woodson, principal founder of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, known today as the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), Moten from 2023 to 2024 volunteered to serve as assistant book review editor for the Journal of African American History, which the University of Chicago Press publishes on behalf of ASALH. In 2025, the University Press of Florida published one of Moten’s final scholarly essays, “Fred Gray and the Desegregation of Alabama’s Public Schools,” which Ohio State University political scientist Judson Jeffries included in an edited volume titled Leading Figures in the History of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Incorporated.
Above all else, Moten was a beloved husband, father, and grandfather. He and his wife, Inga, who retired from ASU in 2021, parented four children: Viola, Danielle, Cole, and James. The family attended the City of St. Jude Catholic Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
Derryn Moten died February 3, 2025.