Bell, Derrick Albert, Jr (1930– )

US legal scholar. He is best known for his work combating racism, discrimination, and poverty as an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 1960–66, and as a deputy director of the National Office of Civil Rights, 1966–68.

He became Harvard Law School's first black tenured professor in 1971, but resigned in 1992 in protest at the lack of African-American women in the faculty. He was also the first black dean of the University of Oregon Law School and a visiting professor at the New York University Law School. His Race, Racism and American Law (1973) became a standard textbook in US law schools.