Born in New York to African-American businessman Reuben Ruby and Rachel Humphey and raised in Portland, Maine,[2] he worked in Boston and Haiti before starting teaching in New Orleans before the end of the American Civil War.

His responsibilities included assessing local conditions, assisting in the establishment of black schools, and evaluating the performance of Bureau field officers.

Ruby's endeavors were met with a positive response from the black population, who eagerly embraced education, but they also faced vehement opposition, including physical violence, from numerous planters and other white individuals.

Working to set up and run schools for blacks, Ruby also helped organize local chapters of the Union League on which mobilization for the newly created Republican party would depend.

When elections took place for delegates to a state constitutional convention in 1868, Ruby was chosen for the district comprising Brazoria, Galveston, and Matagorda counties.

Deeply disturbed by the conservative compromises that made it into the final document, Ruby worked for some months to have it defeated or rejected by the national government.

At the same time, with an eye to his largely white constituency, Ruby introduced bills supporting construction of railroads radiating from Galveston, including several transcontinental projects such as the Southern Pacific and the International & Great Northern.

Railroad aid was not a win-win deal; money or lands appropriated to help out their projects came at the expense of other needs of the state, such as a well-financed public school system.

[10] "In the post-Civil War era no black man in Texas exercised more political power than did George Thompson Ruby," Moneyhon wrote.

"An astute politician, Ruby built a base of power in the black community of Galveston, then used that support to make himself a major force in the state at large.

He was a forceful advocate of civil and political rights for his race, but he knew when to compromise to gain his larger goals, and he moved carefully among hostile white politicians in his efforts to expand opportunities for black people.

It supported the voluntary migration of freedmen from the Deep South to Kansas, in order to escape segregation, violence and white supremacy.

Still an influential spokesperson for black interests in Louisiana, Ruby died on October 31, 1882, of malaria at his home on Euterpe Street, New Orleans.