In the 1940s and 1950s, Puryear was a social worker in Newark, New Jersey. She was ordained as a minister in the AME Church. She spoke at churches and at national and regional church conferences. She was an alternate delegate to the 1948 Republican National Convention from New Jersey. In 1962, she was Dean of Women at Florida A&amp;M State College. In 1967, she was still active with Alpha Kappa Alpha, as head of the sorority's "Negro heritage project". In 1970, she helped launch a "black culture reading library" at the Pearl Street YWCA in Nashville, Tennessee.