Dorothy "Dottie" Miller was born in January 14, 1938 in New York City. She was educated at Queens College and went South in 1961 to work for the Southern Regional Council. In 1962 she joined the public relations staff of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963 Dorothy married Robert "Bob" Zellner.
Following their marriage the couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Dorothy ran the New England Regional Office of SNCC while Bob attended Brandeis University. Both then worked as SNCC staff members in Mississippi during the summer of 1964. Later, they worked for the New Orleans-based Grass-Roots Organizing Work (GROW) project of the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) and Deep South Education and Research Associates, sponsored by Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations Inc. Both GROW and DSERA were established to organize poor white Southerners into effective interracial labor and political groups.
During the late 1960s and 1970s Dorothy Zellner became active with feminist and health care groups. The Zellners were separated in 1980 and divorced in 1990.
