Alysia Burton Steele, Ph.D., is an award-winning visual journalist, oral historian, and cultural storyteller whose career spans Pulitzer Prize–winning photo editing, community-engaged scholarship, and nationally recognized publications. Abbreviated resume.

 

After 13 years in academia, she is currently advancing her next book — Traces of Elaine: The Long Forgotten Photographs of a Civil Rights Photographer — under contract, while also teaching an African American Women’s History class and developing an oral-history youth program in collaboration with a civil rights organization. Her subsequent project, COTTON: Voices from the Field, will further elevate rural Southern narratives of the lived experiences.
 

A former picture editor at The Dallas Morning News — where the photo staff earned the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for their Hurricane Katrina coverage, and deputy director of photography at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Steele is celebrated for her visual storytelling, collaborative leadership, public-facing communication, and ability to build trust across communities. She holds a master’s in Visual Communication from Ohio University's Visual Communication program, and a Ph.D. in U.S. History (Post-Civil War) from the University of Mississippi, where her dissertation on SCLC photographer Elaine Tomlin provides the foundation for her current book. Her doctoral research centers on civil rights history, specifically Black women's labor during the classical era of the Civil Rights Movement.
 

Her acclaimed debut, Delta Jewels: In Search of My Grandmother’s Wisdom (2015), combined portraiture and oral history from 54 Black church mothers in the Mississippi Delta. The book — endorsed by Reena Evers, Gloria Steinem, and Roy Blount Jr. — garnered the Mississippi Humanities Council’s Preserver of Mississippi Culture Award, was a Jessie Fauset Nonfiction Award finalist, and prompted nearly 100 nationwide speaking engagements. Steele’s work has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, USA Today, and Southern Living, among others, and she has served as an international judge for the world-renowned Best of Photojournalism and Pictures of the Year international contest.
 

Steele remains deeply committed to empowering communities through narrative and service by honoring voices too often overlooked.