Margaret Moseley

Ancestar

Margaret Moseley
August 11, 1901 – December 11, 1997
Unitarian Church of Barnstable and Community Church of Boston

  • Born in Dedham and graduated from high school in Dorchester in 1919; prevented from pursuing careers in nursing and business due to racial discrimination
  • Founded a consumer’s cooperative in 1940s Boston and was a member of the board of the Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts
  • Presented a check to Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1958 from Freedom House in Roxbury to support his civil rights efforts
  • Chaired the Board of the United Church of Barnstable and was a founding member of the Social Responsibility Committee; was the first woman to chair the Prudential Committee, the governing body of the church
  • Served as president of the Community Church of Boston, and as legislative chair for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), which honored her with the establishment of the Margaret Moseley Memorial Peace Education Fund in 1989
  • Lifelong activist who joined other Unitarian Universalist women from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom to register voters in Selma, Alabama in 1965
  • Visited the grieving family of Viola Luizzo, a white Unitarian Universalist who was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members in Montgomery, Alabama
  • Moved to Cape Cod in 1961, where she participated in the formation of local chapters of both the NAACP and WILPF, the Fair Housing Committee on Cape Cod, and the Community Action Committee of Cape Cod