About
Dedria A. Humphries Barker
Dedria Humphries Barker is the author of the social justice biography, Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, a Colored Man’s Widow (New York: 2Leaf Press, 2020). She earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in English from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Married and the mother of three adult children and grandmother to eight, she hails from the Humphries family of Detroit, and their four-generation legacy of public service and political participation.
Her public service started when she was a student. In high school, she worked summers for the State of Michigan Unemployment Compensation Bureau, and while attending Wayne State University, she worked for the City of Detroit Elections Commission. She has been employed with Michigan State University and Lansing Community College.
Her communication career started with The Michigan Chronicle in Detroit. She trained for daily newspaper journalism at the Maynard Institute of Journalism Education, University of California, Berkeley campus. She is a former staff writer with two Gannett Co., Inc., daily newspapers, The Commercial-News in Danville, Illinois, and The Lansing State Journal in Lansing, Michigan.
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As a free-lance writer, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Detroit News, The Milwaukee Courier, The Miami Times, Redbook and Good Housekeeping magazines, Utne Reader, Salon.com, Literary Mama, among other markets. She has been published by PloughsharesBlog, Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature and the Ohio and Michigan historical societies, and in the anthologies, The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives of Mixed-Race Americans, and Black Lives Have Always Mattered.
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The LCC Board of Trustees appointed her professor in Communication and English. She is a former journalism instructor at Michigan State University School of Journalism, a nationally-accredited program. She trained in video production at the City of Lansing Public Media Center, and produced video communication in her roles as Lead Faculty and Mentoring Coordinator at LCC.
She serves on the Elections committee of Delta Sigma Theta, Inc., Lansing Alumnae Chapter. She pledged this public service sorority at Tau Chapter, while a student at WSU. She was chairperson of Lansing’s Founders Day event keynoted by 18th national Delta president Hortense G. Canady, who was also LCC Foundation executive director. Amid the devastation of Black communities in Michigan and the United States, Humphries Barker originated the Lansing chapter’s Social Action Committee’s program, COVID-19 Ingham County 911 Virtual Townhall.
Humphries Barker can be found at www.dedriahumphries.com, on Facebook, Twitter @dedria_hb, and Instagram at dedriahb.
