Mayo was born in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, to James Henry and Harriet Elizabeth Mayo, and was educated privately. Shortly after graduation, she started work as a researcher and historian by helping Oswald Garrison Villard of the New York Evening Post prepare his book John Brown 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After, a biography of John Brown, which was published in 1910. Villard was a founder of the American Anti-Imperialist League and an officer of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He influenced Mayo to become a social reformer. Mayo also became a member of the Mayflower Society and had cordial links with the Daughters of the American Revolution. The latter were hostile to non-white immigration to the United States at the time, believing the country to rightfully belong to white Anglo Saxons of British descent and Protestant faith. Several of Mayo's early writings promoted anti-Catholicism and hostility to non-white independence movements against European colonial rule. Mayo combined anti-Catholicism and Anti-Filipino sentiment in her writings that opposed the independence of the Philippines from American rule. Mayo's early journalistic works celebrated the Anglo-Saxon "racial character" of American nationalism and promoted xenophobia against Irish Catholic immigrants, as well as increasingly prominent African American laborers. Mayo claimed that "negroes" were sexually aggressive and lacked self-control, thus rendering them a threat to "innocent white Anglo-Saxon women". Mayo put her highly effective writing skills behind the effort to establish the New York State Police and supported their ability to control immigrants and blacks whose involvement in labor rights agitations were viewed by Mayo as a threat to white supremacy. Mayo became notorious for her polemical book Mother India, in which she attacked Hindu society and religion, and the culture of India. Critics of Mayo accuse her works of being racist, pro-imperialist and Indophobic tracts that "expressed all the dominant prejudices of colonial society. Conversely, supporters cited the truth of her first-hand observations The book created a sensation on three continents. Written against the demands for self-rule and Indian independence from the British Raj, Mayo alluded to the treatment of India's women, the Dalits, the animals, the dirt and the character of its nationalistic politicians. Mayo singled out what she perceived to be the "rampant" and fatally weakening sexuality of its males to be at the core of all problems, leading to masturbation, rape, homosexuality, prostitution and venereal diseases and, particularly, to very early sexual intercourse and premature maternity. Mayo's claims were supported by British Indian authorities as a countermeasure to growing sympathies for the Indian Independence Movement against British rule in the region. The book was thus received enthusiastically by British authorities and propagated among Americans who related the movement for Indian independence with the American Revolution. The book prompted the publication of over fifty critical books and pamphlets and an eponymous film. It was burned in India and New York, along with an effigy of its author. It was criticized by Mahatma Gandhi, who wrote in response: After its publication Dalip Singh Saund wrote My Mother India to counter Mayo's assertions. Another response to Mayo's book was Dhan Gopal Mukerji's A Son of Mother India Answers. The title of the 1957 Hindi epic film Mother India was a deliberate rebuke to Mayo's book. Lala Lajpat Rai wrote a book in response to this book called Unhappy India in 1928. This book by Rai answers to the observations by Mayo and is considered worthy of read to understand the topic completely.
