Mary Britton attended Berea College, but left to seek employment as a teacher in several schools in Central Kentucky because of the untimely death of her parents.  She taught in the Lexington public school system beginning around 1876.  She went on to graduate from the American Missionary College in Chicago, and practiced medicine from her home in Lexington.  Her specialty was hydrotherapy and electrotherapy. According to historian Doris Wilkinson, Dr. Britton obtained a license from the city clerk to practice medicine in 1902, becoming the first African American woman physician in Lexington.

  She was also a founding director of the Colored Orphan Industrial Home and served as the president of the local Woman’s Improvement Club.  She was active in the movement to overturn the separate coach law, under which African Americans and whites were required to ride in separate cars on passenger trains.  Mary Britton was an active member of the Suffrage Movement as well.

  Britton wrote for the American Citizen, the Daily Transcript and the Lexington Leader.  Her writings expressed her belief in abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, as well as a general need for societal reformation.