She was the South Carolina state chair of the National Woman's Party for almost forty years, and led the creation of the free public library system in Charleston County.

[3] She trained for teaching at Memminger Normal School,[4] and earned a bachelor's degree from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1906.

[4] She created an early sex education course, titled Child Development and Family Relations, for high school seniors.

With her sisters Carrie and Anita, she was a charter member of the Charleston Equal Suffrage League, and later joined the National Woman's Party, for which she was South Carolina state chair.

[6][7][8] She led efforts to open a free public library system in Charleston County in the 1930s; it served both Black and white residents, though in separate facilities, under the racial segregation laws of the Jim Crow South.