Mary Burnett Talbert, was an educator, activist, international human rights proponent, and one of the best-known Black women of her time. She was born Mary Morris Burnett on September 17, 1866, in Oberlin, Ohio. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1886, at a time when it was rare for women and Black women to attain degrees. After graduation, Talbert began a successful teaching career in Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1887, she became the state’s first African American woman to be promoted to assistant principal and was assigned to Bethel University. By 1888, at age 22, she was principal of Union High School.
During her short stay in Little Rock, she had begun to receive national recognition as an educator and orator. In 1891, she married William Herbert Hilbert Talbert, a wealthy Buffalo city clerk and realtor, whose prominent family had resided in the Buffalo region for nearly a century. Following her move to Buffalo, Mary Burnett Talbert launched a career as a club woman, social activist and civil rights leader. She became actively involved in the public sector at the turn of the twentieth century, after the birth of her only child Sarah May.
In Buffalo, Talbert volunteered with the politically active Michigan Avenue Baptist Church. Talbert trained over 300 area Sunday school teachers at the church. She fought police sanctioned vice in the African American community. Mary also founded the Christian Culture Congress, a literary club at her church that sponsored prominent speakers such as educator and religious leader Nannie Helen Burroughs, artist Meta Warrick Fuller, and political figures W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. In 1899, she became one of the founding members of the Phyllis Wheatley Club of Colored Women.
This remarkable group of women, the city's first affiliate of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs, set an ambitious program of service to others in order to achieve the NACW mission and emulate the Club motto, "Lifting as we climb". By 1901, Talbert had become known across the country because she challenged the Pan American Exposition organizers that met in Buffalo in 1901. She hosted an interracial forum, “Why the American Negro Should Be at the 1901 Pan American Exhibition,” to protest the exclusion of Blacks and the negative stereotypical depictions of them .
She demanded the appointment of a Black board member and called for an exhibit showcasing African-American life. They called on the Board of Managers of the Pan American Exposition to include the Negro Exhibit, an exhibit that presented the achievements of Blacks since Emancipation, in the upcoming Exposition. Talbert emphasized the positive impact previous worlds fairs had on challenging the negative stereotypes of Blacks. During the Pan American Exposition, she hosted the second biennial conference of the NACW in 1901.
The media gave unprecedented coverage to this convention and highlighted the accomplishments of its distinguished women. In 1905, Talbert and her husband hosted a secret meeting of civil rights activists led by W.E.B. DuBois at her home. The group adopted a series of civil rights resolutions that formed the basis of the Niagara Movement. It pushed for equality for Black men and was a forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Talbert became one of the first women to join the NAACP after its founding in 1909. She went on to serve as vice president and a board member of the NAACP from 1918 until her death in 1923.
During Talbert’s presidency, the Phyllis Wheatley Club invited the NAACP to organize a chapter in Buffalo in 1910. Talbert came to prominence in Buffalo by using the local media to address racial disparities and social concerns. She, Robert Bagnall of the NAACP, and local NAACP representatives met with the editors of Buffalo’s newspapers to challenge their use of yellow journalism when writing about African Americans. After its biennial meeting in Buffalo, Talbert assumed several administrative positions in the NACW and its affiliates.
After its biennial meeting in Buffalo, Talbert assumed several administrative positions in the NACW and its affiliates. Talbert lectured across the U.S. and abroad on the oppression of Blacks in the United States, and became a major factor in bringing Black women into international women’s organizations. As a suffragist, Talbert advocated for women of all races to work together for the cause. She worked to raise awareness among prominent White feminists on the importance of supporting women who were marginalized and less privileged. In 1911, she became a charter member of the Empire Federation of Women's Clubs, and the group's second president from 1912-1916.
Talbert recognized the importance of using the media to unite around causes such as suffrage and to persuade African-American women to work for the vote. In a 1915 article in the Crisis, Talbert wrote, ”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.” Talbert believed that race and gender were unifying factors to resolve class issues. As the struggle for the vote neared its climactic final fights, African-American women’s associations and clubs appeared to put aside differences and focus on the goal–passage and ratification of the 19thAmendment.
In 1916, she was elected President of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. She was elected to a second two-year term as President of that organization in 1918. During her tenure as NACW President, Mary Talbert was instrumental in the preservation and restoration of the Frederick Douglass Home in Anacostia. The Empire State Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs also had placed a marker at the Auburn gravesite of Harriet Tubman, whom Talbert previously had interviewed. During World War I, Mary Talbert was active in the war bond drives, personally soliciting thousands of dollars in Liberty Bonds. Further, she served as American Red Cross Nurse with the American Expeditionary Forces in France.
Talbert joined Addie Hunton, Helen Curtis, and other NACW club women whose mission was to improve living conditions and boost the morale of Black soldiers. Her tireless efforts on the behalf of African American people earned her the NAACP Spingarn Award. Mary Burnett Talbert was the first Black woman to be honored with this prestigious recognition. Talbert, the NACW and its local and state affiliates also pursued penal reforms, especially in the South where Black youths often were targeted, arrested for minor offenses, and incarcerated with hardened criminals. The NACW advocated for these youths by lobbying state and federal legislators and building reformatories and other institutions to provide education and a wholesome environment for them.
Talbert announced several of their successes at the Denver convention of 1920. She promoted education, woman’s suffrage, and programs and policies to alleviate poverty. It was under her leadership that the NACW was accepted as a full member of the International Council of Women (ICW). In 1920, at the ICW's annual conference, that met in Christiana, Norway, Talbert argued that White women were "duty bound to lift [their] voices against the ills that afflict [their] sisters of color." She challenged the delegates to address racism and she concluded by arguing that “the greatness of nations is shown by their strict regard for human rights, rigid enforcement of the law without bias, and a just administration of the affairs of life.”
Just as the responsibilities for Black women were great, Talbert saw the twentieth century as one that offered them great opportunities. In her last years, she worked tirelessly to promote the Dyer Anti–Lynching Bill. This bill would have made lynching a federal crime, penalized local officials for negligence, and fined a county $10,000 if a lynching occurred in its jurisdiction. The Dyer Bill was passed by the House of Representatives on January 26, 2022, but its passage was halted by a filibuster in the Senate. In 1922 she co-founded the International Council of Women of the Darker Races. 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 she passed away.