The Heritage of the Mary B. Talbert Home

The Mary B. Talbert Home for Women was built in 1939 by C. E. Lightner and Brothers Company.  The house stood on E. Davie Street where the playground of Moore Square Middle School is today.[1]

The following information is taken directly out of a personal interview in The Urban Negro in the South.  “….I am a member of the Women’ Club, originally called the Woman’s Reading Club.  It was for married women, and while possible members were discussed, no invitation was necessary to join it.  In late years it started taking in unmarried women too, for we felt that both should belong.  The Mary Talbert Home grew out of this club.

“The origin, development, and functioning of the Mary Talbert Home are especially representative of the implied indirection which has obtained in relationships of women’s formal groups to the Negro Main Street.  The ensuing statements bear this out.

“I organized the Mary Talbert Home for working girls.  Started it on Shaw’s campus in the old pharmaceutical building.  My husband was teaching there and Dr. Peacock (president) gave me permission to use the building.  Not sure of the date of origin, but it was around 1923, for I can judge from my son’s age.  When the government started demanding that you put in certain fixtures and fix up the buildings according to their specifications, it cost too much to do this to that old building.  The women decided they didn’t want to do that, so we bought D. Wortham’s old home there across the street from the YWCA, number 317 East Davie.

“We hired a woman to stay there as matron and made it a housing project for working girls.  It was a neighborhood affair and girls stayed there for $1.50 a week.  When Shaw got ready to tear down the building and put up a new structure we had to move, so we got this place where we are now.  At one time we belonged to the Community Chest and got funds from that.  A few years ago they asked us to let the YWCA share the building with us, but we didn’t feel that we could do that and have enough space for our purposes.  Without even telling us that we were being dropped from the Community Chest, we were suddenly cut off and the only way we knew it was from reading the papers.  Of course we felt that the reason had been our refusal to join with the YWCA.  Since then we have had to work harder to keep the place going but were determined not to be outdone, so we usually take in women in the club who are interested in civic affairs and don’t mind working, for it (the home) is really a job for workers.”[2]

The house was named after Mary Morris Burnett Talbert, born in Oberlin, Ohio, in 1866.  She and her sister were the only two of 9 children born in Ohio, and the rest were born in North Carolina.  Her father, Cornelius Burnett, was born to free parents in Chapel Hill, NC, in 1816.  His wife, Caroline Nicholls Burnett, was born in 1833 in Raleigh, North Carolina and was a descendant of Richard Nicolls, the Englishman who captured New York from the Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch in 1664.  They purchased land in Oberlin but weren’t able to travel there until after the Civil War.  Mary Burnett attended Oberlin High School and graduated from Oberlin College at the age of 19.  She was the only Black student to graduate that year.[3]

Mary Burnett married Will Talbert in 1891.    She was a teacher, but after marriage couldn’t continue to teach in Buffalo, NY, as married women were not allowed to continue in that profession.  She was, however, allowed to teach at church and trained more than 300 Sunday School teachers.

As a charter member of the Phyllis Wheatley Club, a local affiliate of the National Association of Colored Women, she worked hard to help women in her community.  The club opened a settlement house to help mothers and give job support to women.  They also opened a house for the elderly and donated books by black authors to the public libraries.

In 1900/1901, she challenged the Board of Commissioners of the Pan American Exposition to appoint an African American to the Board and to include an exhibit on modern Black American life, such as Booker T Washington’s Negro Education exhibit that had been featured in Atlanta in 1895 or WEB DuBois’ Negro Exhibit in Paris in 1900. She protested the Old Plantation Exhibit, which perpetuated the “happy slave” narrative and the “Darkest Africa” village on the Midway.  Many people came out for the protest, and they were successful.

In 1905, W. E. B. DuBois and the members of what is now known as the Niagara Movement, began meeting at the home of Mrs. Talbert.  And thus, she was part of the beginning of the NAACP.[4]

Mrs. Talbert was many things, too many to enumerate here, but part of her history and work are what inspired the women in Raleigh to create a home to help young women.

Sharing a picture of Mrs. Talbert, as I don’t have one of the house, although I do have many memories of it as it was around the corner from my grandparents house on S. Bloodworth Street.

Other Sources

https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/mary-burnett-talbert/

https://case.edu/ech/articles/m/mary-b-talbert-home-and-hospital

[1] https://ncarchitects.lib.ncsu.edu/buildings/B003733

[2] The Urban Negro in the South, Dr. Wilmoth A. Carter, p. 183-4.

[3] Oberlin Heritage Center.

[4] https://www.uncrownedcommunitybuilders.com/person/mary-3