[1] Years later, her mother delivered an address at Harpers Ferry at the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement, a civil rights group founded by W. E. B.

Mary's husband, Butler R. Wilson, was a prominent civil rights attorney and president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Starting in 1895, as chair of the Education Committee of the National League of Colored Women (NLCW), she campaigned for the establishment of free kindergarten classes for black children in Washington D.C.

[5] That same year, she and Sara I. Fleetwood represented the NLCW at the National Congress of Mothers, a convention in Washington D.C. that led to the formation of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA).

In 1906 she again secured federal funding, this time for kindergarten teacher training classes at the Miner Normal School.

[8] While in her seventies, she lobbied Congress for a health center to combat tuberculosis, and for land to be converted to playgrounds near two local elementary schools.