Mary Burnett Talbert
Mary Burnett Talbert (born Mary Morris Burnett; September 17, 1866 – October 15, 1923) was an American orator, activist, suffragist and reformer. In 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. Career. Mary Morris Burnett was born in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1866. As the only African-American woman in her graduating class from Oberlin College in 1886, Burnett received a Bachelor of Arts degree, then called an S.P. degree. She entered the field of education, first as a teacher in 1886 at Bethel University in Little Rock. She then became assistant principal of the  Union High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1887, the highest position held by an African-American woman in the state. In 1891, she married William H. Talbert, moved to Buffalo, New York, and joined Buffalo's historic Michigan Avenue Baptist Church. Talbert earned a higher education degree at a time when a college education was controversial for women and extremely rare for African-American women. When women's organizations were segregated by race, Talbert was an early advocate of women of all colors working together to advance their causes. Described by her peers as "the best-known colored woman  in the United States," Talbert used her education to take part in anti-lynching and anti-racism work, and she supported women's suffrage. In 1915, she spoke at the "Votes for Women: A Symposium by Leading Thinkers of Colored Women" in Washington, D.C. During her national and international lecture tours, Talbert spoke to audiences about oppressive conditions in African-American communities and the need for legislation to address these conditions. As a founder of the Niagara Movement, Talbert helped to launch organized civil rights activism in America. The Niagara Movement was radical enough in its brief life to both  spawn and absorb controversy within the Black community, preparing the way for its successor, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Central to the efforts of both organizations, Mary Talbert helped set the stage for the civil rights gains of the 1950s and 1960s. Talbert's long leadership of women's clubs helped develop black female organizations and leaders in New York and the United States. Talbert saved the Frederick Douglass home in Anacostia, D.C. after other preservation efforts had failed. Buffalo's 150-year-old Michigan Avenue Baptist Church, to which the Talbert family belonged, has  been named to the United States National Register of Historic Places. Many prominent African Americans worshipped or spoke there. The church also had a landmark role in abolitionist activities. In 1998, a marker honoring Talbert, who served as the church's treasurer, was installed in front of the Church by the New York State Governor's Commission Honoring the Achievements of Women. In October 2005, Talbert was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York. She also has several clubs and buildings named after her, including: Talbert died on October 15, 1923, and is  buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery (Buffalo). A small collection of Talbert family papers, concerned mostly with property and estate matters, survives in the Research Library of the Buffalo History Museum.