September 17, 1866 – Birth of African American Activist Mary Burnett Talbert Called “The Best Known Colored Woman in the United States”

Mary Morris Burnett Talbert was born in Oberlin, Ohio on this day in 1866. She was the only African-American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886.

After her degree, she accepted a position as a high school teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught science, history, math, and Latin at the high school and then at Bethel University. [This historically Black junior college was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal Church and is now called Shorter College.]

In 1887, she was named assistant principal of Little Rock’s Union High School, the only African American woman to hold such a position and the highest position held by a woman in Arkansas.

She married William Talbert in 1891 and moved with him to Buffalo, NY. She was a founding member of the Phyllis Wheatley Club, which affiliated with the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACW). The National Women’s Hall of Fame reports that she transformed the NACW into a truly national institution with structure and organizational procedures. Its first national undertaking was the 1922 purchase and restoration of the Frederick Douglass home in Anacostia, MD. She was elected president for life of the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association.

Mary Talbert, via Buffalo History Museum

The Club also established a settlement house and helped organize the first chapter of the NAACP (1910).

Buffalo’s NPR station recounts that “Talbert worked tirelessly alongside her white counterparts in the final decade of the suffrage fight. Talbert’s years working for social justice through Black women’s clubs had given her first-hand experience that many white suffragists didn’t have.”

Talbert became a prolific writer and she soon gained a national reputation. This fame gave her a platform to speak at the 1915 “Votes for Women: A Symposium by Leading Thinkers of Colored Women” in Washington, DC:

It should not be necessary to struggle forever against popular prejudice, and with us as colored women, this struggle becomes two-fold, first because we are women and second, because we are colored women. Although some resistance is experienced in portions of our country against the ballot for women, I firmly believe that enlightened men, are now numerous enough everywhere to encourage this just privilege of the ballot for women, ignoring prejudice of all kinds… by her peculiar position the colored woman has gained clear powers of observation and judgment — exactly the sort of powers which are today peculiarly necessary to the building of an ideal country.”

Talbott served as a Red Cross nurse during World War I in France, sold thousands of dollars of Liberty Bonds during the war, offered classes to African American soldiers and was a member of the Women’s Committee of National Defense. After the war, she was appointed to the Women’s Committee on International Relations, which selected women nominees for position in the League of Nations.

Mary Talbert via Buffalo History Museum

Buffalo’s NPR report points out that despite Talbert’s renown as “the best known colored woman in the United States” and her stature as a former president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, the National Woman’s Party still rejected her as a speaker at its 1921 conference. They were not interested in promoting a “race” organization and not a “feminist” one, seemingly oblivious to the fact that Black women experienced race and gender simultaneously. Despite the passage of the 19th Amendment that year, Black women like Talbert were nowhere near achieving equal rights.

Talbert died on October 15, 1923, and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery (Buffalo).

Times have changed and not being alive anymore helps. In October 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. She is also remembered around the United States as the namesake of clubs and buildings.