Josephine Ruffin
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Josephine Ruffin, born Josephine St. Pierre, (August 31, 1842 in Boston – March 13, 1924 in Boston) was a U.S. civil rights leader.
Ruffin's mother was an English born white woman and her father had been born in Martinique. John St. Pierre was a successful clothes dealer and founder of a Boston Zion church. He was able to afford a good education for his daughter. He objected to the segregated schools in Boston and so she was sent to Salem to be educated. When she was sixteen she graduated from a Boston finishing school, completed two years in New York and married George Lewis Ruffin, the first African-American to graduate from Harvard Law School, serve on the Boston City Counsil and in the state legislature, and as Boston's first black municipal judge. The couple were both active in the struggle against slavery and, during the Civil War, they helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army, the Mass 54th and 55th regiments. The couple also worked for the Sanitation Commision. In 1858 they bought a house on Boston's Beacon Hill, and began a family.
Ruffin also 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 woman, Julia Ward Howe and Lucy Stone also founded the New England Woman's Club in 1868. Josephine Ruffin was its first black member when she joined in the mid 1890's. Josepine also wrote for the black weekly paper, the Courant and became a member of the New England Woman's Press Association.
When George Lewis Ruffin died at the age of 52 in 1886, Josephine used her financial security and organizational abilities to start the Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African American woman. While promoting interracial activities, the Woman's Era called on black woman to demand increased rights for their race.
In 1895, Ruffin organised the National Federation of Afro-American Women. She convened the first national conference in Boston, which was attented by 100 woman from 20 clubs in 10 states. The following year, the organization merged with the Colored Women's League to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW). Mary Church Terrell was elected president and Ruffin served as one of the organization's vice-presidents.
In 1894, Ruffin organized the Women's Era Club, an advocacy group for black women, with the help of her daughter Florida Ridely and Maria Baldwin, a Boston school principal. From 1890 to 1897, Ruffin served as the editor and publisher of Woman's Era, the first newspaper published by, and for, African-American women. The paper highlighted the achievements of African-American women and championed black women's rights.
Just as the NACW was forming, Joesphine Ruffin was desegregrating the New England Woman's Club, and when the General Federation of Woman's Clubs met in Milwaukee in 1900, she planned to attend as a representative of three organizations-- the New Era Club, the New England Woman's Club and the New England Woman's Press Club. But southern woman 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 woman, 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 woman should confine themselves to their clubs and the large field of work open to them there."
The New Era Club disbanded in 1903 but Josephine Ruffin remained active. Ruffin remained active in the struggle for equal rights and, in 1910, helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Ruffin was one of the charter members of NAACP and, along with other woman who had belonged to the New Era Club, she co-founded the League of Woman for Community Service which still exists today.
Josephine Ruffin remained extremely active for Woman's rights up until the end of her life. She died in Boston on March 13, 1924.
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