Born Mary Morris Burnett in Oberlin, Ohio. After graduating high school at 16, she attended Oberlin College, where she was the only Black student when higher education was uncommon for women of any race. In 1886, at the age of 20, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree and became a teacher at Bethel University in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught math, science, history, and Latin. The following year, she was appointed assistant principal of Union High School – the highest position held by a Black woman in the state.
In 1891, at 25, she married William H. Talbert, and the couple moved to Buffalo, New York. There, she became an active member of the Old Michigan Avenue Baptist Church, establishing a Sunday school for teachers and founding the Christian Culture Club. Soon, she broadened her activities to promote women’s rights and equality for African-Americans and became a civic leader in her community.
In 1889, Talbert co-founded the Phyllis Wheatley Club, which became the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), and later served as its president. In 1901, she established a literary society and forum called the Christian Culture Congress. That year, she led a campaign against the exclusion of Black people from the Pan-American Exposition Planning Commission. It resulted in the addition of the Negro Exhibit that highlighted the economic and cultural achievements of African-Americans.
In 1905, Talbert hosted a secret meeting of 30 black activists, among them John Hope and W.E.B DuBois, in which they founded the Niagara Movement. Though short-lived, it was the forerunner to the National Association of Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), founded four years later. Throughout the years, Talbert held various positions in the NAACP. She co-founded its chapters in New York, Louisiana, and Texas. She was a member of its board, served as its vice president, and chaired its Anti–Lynching Committee.
During WW1, Talbert served as a YMCA secretary and Red Cross nurse in France. She joined the Women’s Committee of National Defense and traveled through Europe, giving lectures and selling Liberty Bonds to support the war effort. When the war had ended, she joined the Women’s Committee on International Relations to select women for various positions in the League of Nations and embarked on a lecturing tour in US and Europe, speaking on the importance of race relations and women’s rights. She believed that women of all races and classes needed to work together for women’s suffrage, and she dedicated most of her time advocating for this cause in Buffalo alongside her white counterparts.
In her last years, she worked tirelessly to promote the Dyer Anti–Lynching Bill to establish lynching as a federal crime, and in 1922 she co-founded the International Council of Women of the Darker Races. She died in the following year, at 57, after dedicating three decades to promote women’s and civil rights, founding and playing significant roles in various organizations, paving the way for human rights activists to follow.
This post is also available in:
Español
This post is also available in:
Español
