Macon pioneer’s legacy lives on through trust; support still needed

A pioneer for women and African-Americans decided to leave a legacy behind in Macon to benefit future generations.

The Ruth Hartley Mosley Memorial Women’s Center was a vision of the namesake to create a place where women could get the help needed to become involved in the health care industry and other areas. But with limited funds from a trust she left behind, the center faces some financial instability and is need of repairs to restore some of its luster.

Hartley Mosley, who was black, lived in the 626 Spring St. house that later became the women’s center. She played an instrumental role in programs that helped women become nurses, receive GED diplomas and get other job training during the Jim Crow era and beyond.

The center is “important because it tells the story of a visionary,” Executive Director Gerri Marion-McCord said. “She was a woman who was really devoted to making sure women understood their worth in terms of what they provided to the community.”

The women’s center is part of the Cotton Avenue Historic District, a neighborhood that was once the focal point of black businesses, education and culture in Macon. That district is part of Historic Macon Foundation’s Fading Five that lists structures that are in peril. In recent years, two other historic structures, the Charles Douglass House and Tremont Temple Missionary Baptist Church, have been torn down for new commercial development.

Macon-Bibb County Commissioner Elaine Lucas said the Hartley Mosley center is too important to Macon’s history to suffer from the same fate as the Douglass house and Tremont. Over the years, she’s attended various meetings and events inside the center.

“It’s important because Ruth Hartley Mosley was an important historical figure,” Lucas said. “I’m for Macon’s history and we are losing important black women’s history, black history period. Children need to understand what their ancestors accomplished. They were successful nurses and business owners and they can be one, too.”

The center continues to provide space for events and meetings, including alumni associations from colleges such as Albany State University and Savannah State University.

The center has also hosted a robotics camp in partnership with Talent Search, held breast cancer awareness programs and is playing a role in the re-establishment of a Federated Girls Club, which focuses on culture, education and other ways for “women to enhance” themselves, Marion-McCord said.

“We have to make sure we can maintain the Ruth Hartley Mosley center,” she said. “Not too many cities can claim, especially of a black woman, leaving something of this magnitude to the community.”

Hartley Mosley legacy

Born Ruth Price in 1886, she is believed to become the first black registered nurse in Middle Georgia. By the age of 24, she was the head nurse of the colored females section at the Georgia State Sanitarium in Milledgeville.

Hartley Mosley’s first husband was Richard Hartley who owned a saloon but later sold that, likely at the request of his wife. The couple then opened a funeral home in the 1920s and Mosley became one of the first women in the nation to become a licensed embalmer.

“They began acquiring real estate and owned 100 rental homes in the Macon area,” Marion-McCord said.

Richard Hartley died in 1931 and six years later she married Fisher Mosley. She would work as a nurse with Bibb County Health Department and school district. Beyond her career, Hartley Mosley was active in the local NAACP chapter and helped found the Booker T. Washington Community Center. She was also a member of the historic Steward Chapel AME Church, also located in the Cotton Avenue district.

“During the era of integration, she made sure she had funds to help integration go smoothly,” Marion-McCord said.

Hartley Mosley, who was a product of the educational efforts afforded by the American Missionary Association, was a public health advocate, said Thomas Duvall, who serves on the center’s board of directors.

Telling stories about local history is a critically missing component in education, he said.

“She was sort of the E.F. Hutton of her era. When she spoke everyone listened,” Duvall said.

This story was originally published December 30, 2016 at 1:48 PM with the headline "Macon pioneer’s legacy lives on through trust; support still needed."