Joseph Delaney was born in Knoxville, TN in 1904, the ninth of ten children and the last of six boys. His father, Reverend (John) Samuel Delaney, was a circuit-riding Methodist preacher, and his mother, Delia Elizabeth (Johnson) Delaney, was born into slavery. Only four of their ten children survived to adulthood.

Joseph and his brother Beauford Delaney exhibited strong interest in drawing from childhood. During the 1920s, Delaney traveled the country and ended up in the Illinois National Guard for three years. In 1928, he returned to Knoxville for a short while, during which time he started the first black Boy Scout troop in the city. Delaney joined his brother Beauford in New York City in 1930, enrolling in the Art Students League and working for the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. Delaney remained in New York for most of his life. There, he developed his distinct artistic style of crowded canvases with bodies, crowds, and city scenes full of movement and expression. “I thrive in the throng,” he told a Knoxville News-Sentinel reporter in 1989.

In 1986, Alex Haley recommended Delaney for an artist-in-residence program at University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Delaney returned to Knoxville where he remained until his death in 1991. His work can be found in the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and others.