She was a notable authority on bibliographies of African-American life and instrumental in forming the library's Division of Negro History, Literature and Prints.

While her early years were spent in France and Germany,[2] her family moved to Brooklyn, NY when she was a child, and she continued to live in New York for most of her adult life.

[4] A year later, the growing collection—supported by community leaders such as historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and activists James Weldon Johnson and Hubert Harrison—became the Division of Negro History, Literature and Prints.

Latimer, working alongside Schomburg to provide user services, wanted patrons to learn how to use the card catalog and fill out library request slips themselves.

[6] Latimer collaborated with Dorothy Porter to create new vocabularies to describe their collections since terms they needed were often missing in the authorized Library of Congress Subject headings[7] and worked to reorganize books on the shelf since the Dewey Decimal System made it difficult to find works related to Black culture.

She died in 1948 at Kings County Hospital after an 8-month illness leaving her husband, son Bosley, mother and brother Henry B. Allen behind.