Jean Derricotte-Murphy

New Jersey native Jean Derricotte-Murphy is a Womanist scholar, ethicist, writer, vocal artist, public theologian, and visionary whose work focuses on “healing and wholeness through history.” She is the creator of the “Balcony Hermeneutic,” a research method tracing the birth of systemic racism within American culture and society by following the development of minstrelsy and opera as genres of cultural entertainment. The “Balcony Hermeneutic,” takes a reversed and corrective gaze at history through the eyes of those once colonized by calling out and correcting negative stereotypes and errant, dominant cultural narratives about Black and Brown bodies.

Dr. Derricotte-Murphy earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Theology, Ethics, and the Arts from Chicago Theological Seminary (Chicago, IL), her Doctor of Ministry from Ecumenical Theological Seminary (Detroit, MI), and her Master of Theological Studies, Magna Cum Laude, from Drew Theological School (Madison, NJ). She is Vice President of Safe Sacred Space, a 501c3 ministry in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Using her voice and pen as a public theologian, she occasionally writes for the Midwest Business Alliance Journal, contributing opinion pieces on current political and social issues.

She was inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars in April 2024. As a member of the Brazeal Dennard Chorale of Detroit, MI, she performed with them at their Carnegie Hall debut in June 2024. She has toured the world in productions of Porgy and Bess, and was a proud chorus member of Michigan Opera Theater’s commissioned opera Margaret Garner. She’s a retired public school educator who continued teaching as an assistant and adjunct professor at Ecumenical Theological Seminary and an instructor and lecturer at Union Presbyterian Seminary and the University of Mississippi. This wife, mother of five, grandmother to fifteen, and great-grandmother of two, is the daughter, granddaughter, and niece of Black Baptist pastors, preachers, and musicians. She is the first female in this family legacy to become ordained clergy. She presently serves as Associate Minister, Assistant to the Pastor, and Director of the Worship and Arts Ministry at The Historic New Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit, MI.

Other published works include "Rituals of Restorative Resistance: Healing Cultural Trauma and Cultural Amnesia through Cultural Anamnesis and Collective Memory." Black Women and Religious Cultures 2, no. 1 (Spr 2021), and “There Was a Prophet Among Us: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness. A Tribute to Delores Seneva Williams.” Black Women and Religious Cultures 4, no. 1 (July 2024.