[3] She would also write short stories, poetry, essays, and plays, and frequently contributed to religious magazines such as the nationally distributed A. M. E. Church Review.

[6] Fiction by Tillman included the novellas Beryl Weston's Ambition: The Story of an Afro-American Girl's Life (1893) and Clancy Street (serialized, 1898–1899).

[8][1] Her themes are often uplifting messages, especially addressed at young black women,[9] as in this exhortation from "Afro-American Women and their Work" (1895): We have been charged with mental inferiority; now, if we can prove that with cultivated hearts and brains, we can accomplish the same that is accomplished by our fairer sisters of the Caucasian race, why then, we have refuted the falsehood.

As a pastor's wife, she lived in various states, taught and lectured, and worked with church women's groups and missionary organizations.

Tillman fell ill and was hospitalized while attending the Eighth Quadrennial Convention of the Women's Parent Mite Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was held in Brooklyn on October 3–8, 1923.