Ruffin, Josephine St. Pierre, 1842-1924

<p>An African-American leader from New England who was a suffragist, fought slavery, recruited African-American soldiers to fight for the North in the Civil War, and founded and edited a magazine, Josephine Ruffin is best known for her central role in starting and sustaining the role of clubs for African-American women.</p>

<p>The wife of the first African-American man to graduate from Harvard Law School and who became the first African-American municipal judge, Ruffin raised four children and was actively involved in the Civil War and African-American rights. She also served on the Board of the Massachusetts Moral Education Association and the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association, working closely with other New England women leaders, including Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone. Her particular interest was the development of African-American women in New England and nationwide, and in 1894 she organized the Women’s Era Club, among the very first African-American women’s organizations. In 1895, she convened in Boston a conference of representatives of other national groups, which organized the National Federation of Afro-American Women. Its mission was to demonstrate the existence of a large number of educated, cultured African-American women. At its founding meeting she said, “…we are women, American women, as intensely interested in all that pertains to us as such as all other American women; we are not alienating or withdrawing, we are only coming to the front, willing to join any others in the same work and welcoming any others to join us.” In 1896 this group merged with the Colored Women’s League of Washington, forming the National Association of Colored Women; Ruffin was elected first vice-president. Continued resistance of all-white national women’s clubs reinforced her commitment to the importance of the African-American clubwomen’s movement, and she remained an active participant throughout her life.</p>

<p>Ruffin was also active in the founding of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and of the League of Women for Community Service.</p>

<p>Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was born into one of Boston’s leading families on August 31, 1842. St. Pierre’s mother was an English-born white woman and her father was from the island of Martinique, and founder of the Boston Zion Church. The St. Pierre’s sent their young daughter to Salem where the schools were integrated due mainly to the work of John Lenox Remond.</p>

<p>St. Pierre married George Lewis Ruffin at the age of 15. Ruffin was the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School and later served on the Boston City Council, the state legislature, and became the first black municipal judge in Boston. After marriage, Mrs. Ruffin graduated from a Boston finishing school and completed two years of private tutoring in New York. During the civil war, the Ruffins were involved in various charity works, civil rights causes, and Mrs. Ruffin, especially, was involved in the women’s suffrage movement where she worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.</p>

<p>From 1890 through 1897, Ruffin edited <i>Women’s Era</i>, the first newspaper published by and for African American women. She also founded, with her daughter Florida Ridely and Boston school principal Maria Baldwin, the “Women’s Era Club.” Believing that a national organization for black women was needed, she convened the first annual convention in 1895 which drew 100 women from 20 clubs across the United States. She named the organization the National Federation of Afro-Am Women, which a year later united with the Colored Women’s League to become the National Association of Colored Women. Mary Church Terrell was the organization’s president while Ruffin and several others served as vice-presidents.</p>

<p>Although the Women’s Era Club later disbanded, Ruffin remained active and became one of the founding members of the Boston NAACP in 1910. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin died in Boston on March 13, 1924.</p>

<p>Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (August 31, 1842 – March 13, 1924) was an African-American publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor of the <i>Woman's Era</i>, the first national newspaper published by and for African-American women.</p>

<p>Ruffin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to John St. Pierre, of French and African descent from Martinique, and Elizabeth Matilda Menhenick from Cornwall, England. Her father was a successful clothier and founder of a Boston Zion Church. She attended public schools in Charlestown and Salem, and a private school in New York City because of her parents' objections to the segregated schools in Boston. She completed her studies at the Bowdoin School (not to be confused with Bowdoin College), after segregation in Boston schools ended.</p>

<p>At 16 years old, she married George Lewis Ruffin (1834–1886), who went on to become the first African-American graduate from Harvard Law School, the first African American elected to the Boston City Council, and the first African-American municipal judge. The couple moved to Liverpool but returned to Boston soon afterwards and bought a house in the West End.</p>

<p>Working with her husband, Ruffin became active in the struggle against slavery. During the Civil War, they helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army, the 54th and 55th Massachusetts regiments. The couple also worked for the Sanitation Commission, which provided aid for the care of soldiers in the field. After the war ended, Ruffin turned her attention organizing Kansas Relief Association to collecting money and clothes to send to aid southern blacks resettling in Kansas.</p>

<p>Ruffin supported women's suffrage and, in 1869, joined with Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone to form the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in Boston. A group of these women, Howe and Stone also founded the New England Women's Club in 1868. Josephine Ruffin was its first black member when she joined in the mid-1890s. Ruffin also wrote for the black weekly paper, <i>The Courant</i> and became a member of the New England Woman's Press Association.</p>

<p>When her husband George died at the age of 52 in 1886, Ruffin used her financial security and organizational abilities to start the Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African-American women. She served as the editor and publisher from 1890 to 1897. While promoting interracial activities, the Woman's Era called on black women to demand increased rights for their race.</p>

<p>In 1894, Ruffin organized the Woman's Era Club, an advocacy group for black women, with the help of her daughter Florida Ridley and Maria Baldwin, a Boston school principal.</p>

<p>In 1895, Ruffin organized the National Federation of Afro-American Women. She convened The First National Conference of the Colored Women of America in Boston, which was attended by women from 42 black women's clubs from 14 states. The following year, the organization merged with the Colored Women's League to form the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC). Mary Church Terrell was elected president and Ruffin served as one of the organization's vice-presidents.</p>

<p>Just as the NACWC was forming, Ruffin was integrating the New England Woman's Club. When the General Federation of Women's Clubs met in Milwaukee in 1900, she planned to attend as a representative of three organizations – the Woman's Era Club, the New England Woman's Club and the New England Woman's Press Club. Southern women were in positions of power in the General Federation and, when the Executive Committee discovered that all of the New Era's club members were black, they would not accept Ruffin's credentials. Ruffin was told that she could be seated as a representative of the two white clubs but not the black one. She refused on principle and was excluded from the proceedings. These events became known as "The Ruffin Incident" and were widely covered in newspapers around the country, most of whom supported Ruffin. Afterwards, the Woman's Era Club made an official statement "that colored women should confine themselves to their clubs and the large field of work open to them there."</p>

<p>The New Era Club was disbanded in 1903, but Ruffin remained active in the struggle for equal rights and, in 1910, helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was one of the charter members of the NAACP. Along with other women who had belonged to the New Era Club, she co-founded the League of Women for Community Service, which still exists today.</p>