The MARY B. TALBERT HOME AND HOSPITAL, founded as the Mary B. Talbert Rescue Home in 1925, assisted unmarried, pregnant black women and girls in Cleveland until closing in 1960. The Cleveland Council of Colored Women raised $1,000 and asked the Welfare Fed. to extend maternity home care to black women (when almost no white residential institutions admitted AFRICAN AMERICANS). The federation asked the SALVATION ARMY to administer the facility. The Army had run the BOOTH MEMORIAL Home for unwed mothers since 1892 and maintained a home for black mothers in Cincinnati. The all-black home with 12 beds was named for an anti-lynching activist, the second president of the National Assn. of Colored Women. Originally located at 2215 E. 40th St., in 1930 the Talbert home moved to a 25-year-old building at 5905 Kinsman Rd., Booth's former location.
The Mary B. Talbert Home & Hospital served 379 unwed mothers and their babies in 1958, and more than 4,300 people attended its home economics and child care classes that year. Despite rising illegitimacy and continued exclusion of blacks from other maternity homes, however, the Talbert home continually operated at a deficit, with inadequate if not hazardous facilities. The Welfare Fed. finally withdrew support in 1960 and the home closed, with patients placed at Booth Memorial Hospital's Maternity Home. The Salvation Army continued to provide pre-natal service in the neighborhood, at the Booth-Talbert Clinic, located in the HOUGH Multi-Purpose Ctr. after 1966. This clinic closed in 1976.
Morton, Marian. And Sin No More: Social Policy and Unwed Mothers in Cleveland 1855-1990 (1993).
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