By Elliott Brack
Editor and publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 23, 2025 | A Lawrenceville charitable organization that dates back to 1888 will soon go out of business, but will leave a major legacy in Gwinnett County.
The Loving Aid Society was formed 137 years ago to help Black people when most people in Gwinnett, Black and white, had little money. Its goal: to help people save money, and provide funds for their funerals and care for the sick. Members paid a little each month, and for years, the organization thrived.
The original founders of the Society were Laura Freeman Gholston and Bob Craig. There is little else known about them. But their idea was to “honor the deceased and help their loved ones.”
Its primary mission was to provide assistance for the dignified burial of Black community members and to offer support for those who were sick or impoverished. The society existed as a significant part of the Black community’s self-help efforts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, holding annual gatherings called the “Turn Out.” These gatherings, where members shared recipes, songs, and prayers, helped strengthen community bonds and celebrated their culture.
The Society had a small land plot in Lawrenceville on Neal Boulevard, across from what would become the Hooper Renwick School. (That was in the segregated days when Hooper Renwick was the only school for Blacks in the entire county.)
The Society erected a two-story building on their lot. The lower half was originally a funeral home, and over the years had other uses, including a church and a day care center. Two Masonic lodges held their meetings at the Loving Aid building.
Early members of the Society paid monthly dues of ten cents. The money built up over the years to pay death benefits for members in good standings. Later, the money would also provide some health benefits for its members.
Today only three members of the Society are still alive. They are Mrs. Ruth Summerour, who is 90 years old; Mrs. Glenda G. Abney, 74, and her husband, Moses Abney, 78, all of Lawrenceville.
Mrs. Summerour has been a member of the Society for “at least 50 years. I joined when I married my late husband.” For years, she worked at the Genesco factory in Lawrenceville “cutting shoes.” Before she retired she was a nurse’s aide at the Gwinnett Hospital.
Before Mrs. Abney’s retirement, she worked 43 years with management at Dolco Packaging in Lawrenceville, retiring as its purchasing agent. “I bought all kinds of items for Dolco,” she says.
Her husband, Malcolm (Moses) Abney, an Army veteran (“I was a truck driver in Germany”) worked for years at Saul’s Department Store in Lawrenceville, and continued when Pool’s Department bought out Saul’s. When he first joined the Loving Air Society, “We paid 50 cents a month.”
The City of Lawrenceville on October 10, 2024 paid the Society $497,000 for the 0.23 acre property, to use in the future in a way which has not yet been decided. The city also owns the adjacent property, a 0.92 acre site. There is also an adjacent shopping center.
One of the Society’s projects has been to place a marker in the privately-owned portion of East Shadowlawn Cemetery. The work was finished recently.
The three remaining members are now working on a way to help others in perpetuity with the funding they received.
It is refreshing to hear that the historic work of the Loving and Aid Society will be in a position to continue helping others in the future.
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