After completing her education, she taught at various notable black schools before becoming the first woman of African descent to be employed at the Chicago Post Office.

After two years, the publication folded and she began writing for The Baptist Headlight, The African Mission and became a regular contributor to Our Women and Children.

Though her contract was renewed, she did not like the climate in Selma, Alabama[8] and instead accepted a post as the assistant language and music instructor at Lincoln Institute of Jefferson City, Missouri, working under Inman E.

[8] DeBaptiste returned to Chicago and worked for five years as a postal clerk, which she continued even after her marriage[10][11] on June 20, 1899, to Dr. Henry Clay Faulkner.

[13] The couple still living in Chicago in 1902, when DeBaptiste was elected as one of the commissioners at a conference held on August 6–11 to discuss problems and progress black Americans had made,[14] but soon thereafter, they were sent by the Baptist Foreign Missions Board to Liberia.

While on a lecture tour in the United States and a visit with her mother-in-law, DeBaptiste learned in January, 1907 that her husband had died in Liberia the previous December.

She served as a social worker and organizer in the Butler Community and was the superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Church-sponsored Home for Business and Working Young Women in the 1920s.

She was involved with the NAACP, the Urban League, the YWCA and the World's Fellowship of Faiths, as well as serving as president of the exclusive Old Settler's Club in 1943.