A group has been preserving Macon’s Black history, one weekend at a time. They need help

Macon’s Linwood Cemetery may seem like a quiet, unassuming place, but it is a venerable monument to Black men and women who had a profound impact on Macon and Middle Georgia.

Linwood was founded in 1894 as a private cemetery for Macon’s African-American community, a final testament to a society that through racist laws and customs and daily indignities kept Black and white Maconites as far apart as possible, even in death.

Bordered by Walnut Street and Grant Avenue in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood, Linwood Cemetery is marked by a small metal sign and dotted with trees. It was the site of a Veterans Day ceremony last November attended by Sen. Raphael Warnock.

The Macon Cemetery Preservation Corporation is dedicated to restoring and maintaining the cemetery.

“A lot of history lies here,” said Yolanda Latimore, president of the preservation group. “We’re trying to get funding for mapping so we can share history and archive it. We need to share this history, because it’s not in books, it’s not in schools. If a lot of us knew our history, it would help us to be better people.”

Supporters can donate to the preservation efforts by contributing to the cemetery’s endowment fund through the Community Foundation of Central Georgia. On the second Saturday of every month from 9 a.m. to noon, the corporation invites volunteers to work at the cemetery, clearing debris and cleaning gravesides.

Here are a few of the men and women buried at Linwood, with details taken from public records and Telegraph archives:

• Rodney M. Davis (1942-67): Pleasant Hill’s Davis joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1961 and was deployed to Vietnam in 1967. A month later, his platoon was pinned down in a trench by the North Vietnamese. A grenade landed in the trench and Davis immediately jumped on top of it, saving his fellow soldiers. Davis was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. A U.S. Navy frigate, the “USS Rodney M. Davis,” was named in his honor.

• Charles H. Douglass (1870–1940): Maconites who don’t know anything about Charles Douglass undoubtedly have heard about his theater in downtown Macon. A prominent businessman and community leader who prospered despite racism and Jim Crow laws in the post-war South, Douglass owned several businesses before opening his historic theater in 1911. He ran the Douglass until his death in 1940, showing films and hosting early jazz and blues acts.

• Ruth Price Hartley Mosley (1886-1975): Hartley Mosley 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 the Civil Rights Movement. She is believed to have been the first Black registered nurse in Middle Georgia. By the time she was 24, Hartley Mosley was the head nurse of the Black women’s section at the Georgia State Sanitarium in Milledgeville. The Ruth Mosley Hartley Women’s Center on Spring Street carries on her legacy of helping women in Middle Georgia.

• Jefferson Franklin Long (1836-1901): A self-educated tailor and business owner born into slavery, Long was elected to the House of Representatives in 1871. He was the first African American congressman from Georgia, the second sworn into the House of Representatives and the first Black Man to speak on the House floor. Long remained the only Black man to represent Georgia until almost a century later, when Andrew Young was elected in 1972.

This story was originally published February 28, 2022 at 2:40 PM.