In devoting his life to preserving his community’s legacy, Franklin Douglas Moss created one for himself.
The former Fort Worth City Council member met some of the most honored Black Civil Rights activists in American history, including Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson.
Moss, 81, died in his sleep the morning of Dec. 14.
Franklin Moss Jr. recalled how he began traveling across the country at a young age, marching and meeting the activists alongside his dad.
“(My father) wanted me to understand what they did, who they were, and the type of changes that they were trying to make,” Moss Jr. said.
The experiences left him with one central impression: “Everybody was a normal person, but they were just trying to do what was right.”
Unknowingly, Franklin Moss Jr. was describing a sentiment many feel for his father, who devoted his life to tirelessly serving others and preserving the history of Fort Worth’s Black community.
The elder Moss’ life of work is a testament to his servant heart, said his wife of 52 years, Christene Moss, who shared her husband’s passion for community service and spent 29 years on the Fort Worth ISD board.
Frank Moss represented Fort Worth’s southeast District 5 from 1998 to 2004 and then from 2007 to 2013. He had been president of the Texas Association of Black City Council Members, a decadeslong leader of the Fort Worth/Tarrant County NAACP as well as an active member of the Texas Municipal League and of the Tarrant County Historic Commission.
As a council member and historian, Frank Moss led the preservation efforts of the Historic Stop Six neighborhood, where he grew up. He served as a deacon at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, one of Fort Worth’s oldest churches that has served Stop Six since 1878.
His impact didn’t stop at the City Council dais. Christene Moss said their home phone was always ringing with people seeking her husband’s help, even for small tasks that go unnoticed.
“People would call him about just all types of issues, like garbage or water bills — they always wanted him to help.” She added with a laugh: “He would put the community a lot of times before his family.”
After Moss pushed for the restoration of his church’s historic Ebenezer Cemetery, he spent the rest of his life volunteering to maintain its lawn, his wife recalled.
His advocacy for District 5 was top of mind for former Mayor Mike Moncrief, who led the city from 2003 to 2012.
“He was straightforward in his responses to issues and finding practical solutions to those,” Moncrief said. “He’s also well known for trying to find middle ground instead of conflict, and that made our journey together even more enjoyable.”
Moss’ council tenure was marked by efforts to improve maternal health, raise HIV awareness, host police forums and bring infrastructure improvements to southeast Fort Worth.
“We’ve lost one of the great ones,” council member Deborah Peoples, who now represents District 5, wrote in a Facebook post. “Grateful for his friendship and mentorship!”
Social media posts from Fort Worth leaders recognizing Moss’ legacy continued over Sunday and Monday, including from Mayor Mattie Parker and council member Chris Nettles.
Moss attended Dunbar High School, earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas Wesleyan University and a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Arlington. He studied for a post-graduate degree at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Frank Moss reads to children at a public event. (Courtesy photo | The Moss family)
A legacy of honesty
Franklin Moss Jr. said his father’s life was marked by honesty and integrity, even when nobody was looking.
He recalled a time when a cable TV worker came by their house and offered to install a cable box that was used to “hack” the networks and illegally access paid channels or copyrighted content.
“It seemed so small, but he refused to do it, even though he could have gotten it done for free,” Moss Jr. said. “He knew it wasn’t right, and he didn’t want to steal it.”
Franklin Moss Jr. said his father’s commitment to helping others never stopped, even in the latter years of his life when his health worsened. For decades, Frank Moss battled cancer, struggled with diabetes, suffered from heart attacks and underwent heart surgery, his family said.
“Even though it slowed him down in actual physical form, he still tried to maintain and tried to stay busy,” Moss Jr. said.
He added that his father was still driving around the city in the week before his death, engaging with the community and trying to ensure the historic Paul Laurence Dunbar Young Men’s Leadership Academy’s legacy was preserved.
Christene Moss, 82, said her husband was an “excellent father” and a lifelong partner to her.
“We’ve done — we did — so many things together. I just have a lot of good memories,” she said. “It’s just hard because you’ve been together over 50 years, and so I knew everything about him, and he knew everything about me.”
She recalled that sometimes, in the days when he served on City Council and she on the school board, work nights would go late and life would get busy.
Sometimes their public service would have them driving in opposite directions, but they were together in moving the city forward, she said.
So it’s only fitting that, at Frank Moss’ last breath, he was by her side.
Editor’s note: Memorial and funeral service dates are yet to be announced.
Drew Shaw is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at drew.shaw@fortworthreport.org or @shawlings601.
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This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
