Maralyn Mosley Once Fought Courthouse Officials to Keep Open a Hospital for the Poor in Alabama. On Wednesday, They Honored Her

By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times Maralyn Mosley, one of Birmingham’s most passionate community activists, isn’t often at a loss for words, she said. But on Wednesday, Mosley said she was both “speechless” and “overwhelmed.” Mosley and more than a dozen elected officials, hospital administrators, business and civic leaders, residents and others gathered for a ribbon cutting at a brand new $120-million Cooper Green Mercy Health Services state-of-the-art outpatient clinic on Birmingham’s southside. The 211,000 square feet, five-story building, at 1509 Sixth Ave. South, provides full-service outpatient care that includes primary and specialty care clinics, urgent care, physical, occupational and speech therapy, laboratory services, imaging, and a pharmacy. Few fought harder for the new Cooper Green than Mosley, a longtime patient, who battled Jefferson County officials for years to make sure the facility provided quality health care for the county’s sick poor. On Wednesday, Mosley learned that a community room inside the facility had been named in her honor. It’s on the first floor right past the pharmacy. The Mosley Room is a “multipurpose space [that] provides room for luncheons for support groups, community meetings, arts in medicine, and more,” according to a program book. “I was in shock,”...