Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924)

Civil Rights Advocate, Suffragist, Publisher

By Mariana Brandman, Ph.D. 

A civil rights advocate, suffragist, clubwoman, and newspaper publisher, Boston’s Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin is best known for founding the Woman’s Era Club, publishing the The Women’s Era newspaper, and convening the first-ever National Conference of Colored Women in 1895. 

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was born in Boston on August 31, 1842 to a white mother from England and a Black father from Martinique. Her father, a founder of the Boston Zion Church, owned a clothing business that made him a wealthy and well-known member of the community. Ruffin attended school in nearby Salem until the Boston schools integrated in 1855. 

In 1858, Ruffin married George Lewis Ruffin, a barber from another affluent Black family in Boston. George Ruffin went on to become the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School and the first Black judge in Massachusetts. They soon moved to England in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that Black people were not U.S. citizens, but they returned to Boston after the outbreak of the Civil War to support the fight against slavery. The couple had four sons and one daughter. 

Ruffin began her efforts in public service during the Civil War by recruiting Black men for the 54^th and 55^th Massachusetts infantry regiments. After the war, she joined the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA) and forged connections with prominent suffragists such as Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe. In 1885, she ran MWSA’s voter outreach campaign in the predominantly African American Beacon Hill and West End neighborhoods and in 1887 helped found MWSA’s West End Suffrage League and served as its first president. Ruffin also co-founded the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association in 1880 to encourage women both to vote and to run for office. 

Ruffin’s husband passed away in 1886, after which she decided to further dedicate herself to working on behalf of Black women. After years of active service in women’s clubs, she co-founded The Woman’s Era Club in 1893 with her daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley, as well as Maria Louise Baldwin, Ida B. Wells, and several other Black women from Boston. The club was not limited to Black women, but its membership was largely African American and the club was devoted to improving conditions and promoting education for Black Bostonians, as well as anti-lynching efforts and women’s suffrage. In 1894, the club’s newsletter, The Woman’s Era, began national distribution. It made history as the first national newspaper created by and for Black women.

Ruffin, along with her daughter, organized the first National Conference of Colored Women in America. Publicized in The Woman’s Era, the conference took place in Boston in 1895 and drew 100 women from twenty clubs across the country. Ruffin and the other conference attendees established an umbrella organization to unify their clubs, later called the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), which still exists today. 

Alongside her work to bolster Black women’s clubs, Ruffin also attempted to integrate the General Federation of Women’s Clubs. In 1900, she sought federation membership for the Woman’s Era Club without mentioning the race of most of its members. The federation initially accepted the Woman’s Era Club and Ruffin traveled to their national convention, but when they discovered that the club’s membership was predominately Black, they refused to admit it to the federation and told Ruffin that she could only attend the conference as a delegate of one of the majority white clubs to which she belonged. When Ruffin refused, one white attendee even tried to rip her conference badge from her dress. Her mistreatment at the conference, dubbed “the Ruffin incident,” garnered press coverage nationwide. 

Ruffin spent the next two decades giving speeches about racial equality and women’s rights throughout the country. She remained an active clubwoman and helped found the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1910. Ridley continued her mother’s legacy, contributing many years of service as a clubwoman, anti-lynching advocate, and suffragist. Ruffin passed away in Boston on March 13, 1924. A plaque adorns the building where she lived at 103 Charles Street, Boston.