Although raised in the Congregational Church, she converted to Catholicism in 1922, after years of attending the St Francis de Sales school for girls on the former Belmead plantation property in Virginia.
She was the first "Negro Scholarship" recipient at the Bank Street College of Education in New York City, where she met and became friends with Margaret Wise Brown and was influenced by the "here and now" theory of picture book composition.
Tarry's The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman (from 1955) tells of her life in the South (including her time at the SBS school in Virginia), her migration to New York City, her friendship with McKay, and her deep commitment to Catholicism.
It offers a thoughtful eyewitness view of life in Alabama and Harlem from the 20s through the early 50s, a pivotal era in the evolution of race relations.
The book's concluding chapter recounts a drive from Harlem to Birmingham and back in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision.