Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

Courtesy of New York Public Library

Quick Facts

Significance:

Activist, clubwoman, suffragist

Place of Birth:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

August 31, 1842

Place of Death:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Death:

March 13, 1924

Place of Burial:

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cemetery Name:

Mount Auburn Cemetery

A plaque, inconspicuously attached to 103 Charles Street, recognizes the work of a significant Beacon Hill activist from the turn of the 20^th century, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin. Mainly a list of accomplishments, its words do not fully capture Ruffin’s "fighting spirit."^[1] An activist at heart, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin assumed many public roles throughout her life, from publisher and clubwoman to community leader and national organizer.

Early Life and Work

Born in the small Black community of Beacon Hill in 1842, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin grew up in a multicultural family. Her mother, Eliza Matilda, came from England, and her father, John St. Pierre, had Caribbean (Martinique), African, and Indigenous ancestry.^[2] John St. Pierre owned a successful clothing shop, and he stood as a local leader in the burgeoning Black community on the hill. As a result, Josephine grew up surrounded by the abolitionist ideals of justice, equality, and political representation.

Josephine had a robust education, studying in Salem, Massachusetts, and New York, eventually returning to Boston once school desegregation occurred. During this time, she met George L. Ruffin, whose family had moved north from Virginia. They married in 1858. George Ruffin later became the first Black graduate of Harvard Law School and served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives before becoming the first Black judge in New England. During the pair’s early years of marriage, they four children who lived to adulthood: Hubert St. Pierre Ruffin, Florida Ruffin Ridley, Stanley Ruffin, and George L. Ruffin.^[3]

Although briefly moving to England, Josephine and George Ruffin quickly returned to Boston to take part in the anti-slavery movement. Together, they became pillars in the Beacon Hill community. For example, during the Civil War, they recruited African American men for the 54^th and 55^th Massachusetts infantry regiments.^[4]

After the war, Josephine Ruffin supported several charities that helped Southern Blacks, including the Kansas Relief Association and the Association for the Promotion of Child Training in the South.^[5] In the following decades, Ruffin participated in numerous clubs and service organizations in the Boston area, often skillfully maneuvering between White and Black communities to do so.

Organizing a National Black Women's Club Movement

The Woman’s Era Club, a club primarily for Black women, was one of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin’s greatest achievements. Established in 1893, the Woman’s Era Club offered its members opportunities for self-improvement. It also worked to address issues that directly affected the African American community, from local politics and education to the debilitating discrimination and terrorism of Black Americans in the South. In less than a year, the club grew to over 100 members from greater Boston.

The club’s corresponding publication, The Woman’s Era, quickly became the nationally recognized voice of Black clubwomen. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin and her daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley, used this publication to bring Black clubwomen to Boston in 1895 for the first National Conference of Colored Women in America.^[6] 

In her opening address of the conference, Ruffin announced the launch of a new movement, one led by women of color:

Our woman’s movement is a woman’s movement in that it is led and directed by women for the good of women and men for the benefit of all humanity, which is more than one branch of it. We want, we ask the active interest of our men and too, we are not drawing the color line; we are women, American women as intensely interested in all that pertains to such as all 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 cordially inviting and welcoming others to join us.^[7]

Ruffin hoped this conference would encourage Black women to unify under a single organization and "in truth bring a new era to the colored women of America."^[8] Ruffin’s dream came true; on the final day of the conference, these clubwomen formed the National Federation of Afro-American Women, which served as a precursor to the National Association of Colored Women.^[9]

Support for Women's Suffrage

In addition to laying the foundation for the Black clubwomen's movement, Josephine Ruffin supported the local suffrage movement. While women’s suffrage was not the only cause that caught Ruffin’s eye, she undoubtedly saw suffrage as a step towards greater equality. Ruffin looked up to the Boston abolitionists and women’s rights activists, including Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, who welcomed her into the movement because they "were broad enough to include 'no distinction because of race' with 'no distinction because of sex.'"^[10] Through their encouragement, Ruffin joined and accepted leadership positions in local and national suffrage organizations, many of which were dominated by White women, including the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association (MWSA), and the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association (MSSA).^[11] In these roles, she unflinchingly criticized New England for its hypocritical claims of celebrating liberty and equality: "It is my belief that the sentiment of New England favors 'all rights for all,' except the ballot for women."^[12]

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin particularly encouraged suffrage in Boston’s African American communities. With the MWSA, Ruffin led an organized effort in 1885 to reach out to men and women in the Beacon Hill and West End neighborhoods, which were home to Boston’s African American community. In the months leading to the election, Ruffin helped organize meetings at churches and private homes on Beacon Hill. During these events local leaders, including William Lloyd Garrison, Archibald Grimke, Lucy Stone, and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin herself, spoke in favor of women’s suffrage. They encouraged women to register to vote in school elections (a right Massachusetts women had won in 1879^[13]), and men to vote for a Ward 9 representative who supported municipal suffrage for women.^[14] In 1887, Ruffin helped establish the West End Suffrage League (an affiliate of the MWSA), and served as its first president. Other local Black leaders comprised the club’s 45 founding members, including former state representative Lewis Hayden and religious activist Eliza Gardner.^[15] The League’s motto, "All rights for all," reflected the community’s belief in equality across both race and sex.^[16]

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin’s distinct voice on the suffrage movement’s intersection with race most clearly came through in her editorial in the 1915 special suffrage edition of the NAACP journal The Crisis. Proudly announcing her dedication to "suffrage work in Massachusetts for forty years and more," Ruffin called on African Americans to support suffrage.^[17] Like many of her contemporary activists who had lived through abolition, Ruffin saw the connections between the plight of women and that of African Americans. As a Black woman, she inherently felt the responsibility to fight against the many forms of injustice on both fronts. For her, women’s suffrage served as a stepping-stone to more expansive civil rights: "We are justified in believing that the success of this movement for equality of the sexes means more progress toward equality of the races."^[18]

Later Activism and Community Involvement

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin ultimately did not take significant leadership roles in what became the National Association of Colored Women, likely due to ideological differences in the role Black women’s clubs should play in racial uplift and civil rights. However, she continued to lead as an active clubwoman in women’s and Black women's organizations.

While maintaining her post as leader of the Woman’s Era Club, Ruffin served as a co-founder of two larger organizations – the Massachusetts State Federation of Women’s Clubs and the Northeastern Federation of Women’s Clubs. As her daughter Florida Ridley reflected, "This puts [Ruffin] not only as a pioneer in colored club work, but also as a pioneer in white" club work.^[19]

Despite her leadership in regional and national club organizing, Ruffin still faced discrimination as a Black woman. In 1900, she traveled to Milwaukee for the General Federation of Women’s Clubs as part of the Massachusetts delegation. The Federation had originally accepted her dues without realizing she represented a Black women’s club. A confrontation then ensued when organizers, including the president of the Federation, Rebecca Lowe of Georgia, barred Ruffin from participating on the floor as a delegate of the club. Her fellow delegates, as well as other White supporters, protested to no avail.

Upon her return to Boston, Ruffin received support from both Black and White clubwomen across New England. Several clubs either withdrew or threatened to withdraw from the Federation. The Woman’s Era Club released an official statement on the event:

The General Federation of Women’s Clubs has no color line in its constitution...The Woman’s Era Club having been regularly admitted, no legal or moral ground can possibly be found upon which it could be ruthlessly thrown out at the pleasure of a few individuals.^[20]

Ruffin remained an active community and club leader for the rest of her life. She participated in numerous local organizations, most notably the Soldier’s Comfort Unit (later the League of Women for Community Service) and the Boston Chapter of the NAACP.^[21]

Called "a woman of rare force of character, mental alertness and of generous impulses" by Booker T. Washington, Ruffin dedicated her life to bettering the lives of women and Black Americans both locally and nationally.^[22] Following decades of service, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin died on March 13, 1924.

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Footnotes:

[1] "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction, ed. Hallie Quinn Brown (Xenia, Ohio: The Aldine Publishing Company, 1926): 151-153.

[2] "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Sketches of Representative Women of New England, ed. Julia Ward Howe (Boston: New England Historical Publishing Company, 1904): 335-339.

[3] "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Sketches of Representative Women of New England, ed. Julia Ward Howe; 

[4] Maude Jenkins, "She Issued the Call: Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin." Sage 5, no. 2 (Fall 1988): 74-76; "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Homespun Heroines, ed. Hallie Quinn Brown.

[5] "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Sketches of Representative Women of New England, ed. Julia Ward Howe.

[6] See The Woman’s Era 2, no. 5 (August 1895).

[7] "Address of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, President of Conference," The Woman’s Era 2, no. 5 (August 1895).

[8] "Address of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," The Woman’s Era 2, no. 5 (August 1895).

[9] "Minutes of the First National Conference of Colored Women," The Woman’s Era 2, no. 5 (August 1895); "To the Women of the Country," The Woman’s Era 2, no. 5 (August 1895); Jenkins, "She Issued the Call," 75.

[10] Teresa Blue Holden, "‘Earnest Women Can Do Anything:’ The Public Career of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, 1842-1904," (Phd dissertation, Saint Louis University, 2005); Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, "Trust the Women!" The Crisis 10, no. 4 (August 1915).

[11] Holden, "‘Earnest Women Can Do Anything;’" 112; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920, (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998).

[12] "Mrs. George L. Ruffin," Boston Globe, March 4, 1894.

[13] Barbara Berenson, Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2018), 74.

[14] The Woman’s Journal 16, no. 37 (September 12, 1885), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020; "School Suffrage in Boston," The Woman’s Journal 16, no. 39 (September 26, 1885), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020; "Suffrage Meeting in Ward Nine," The Woman’s Journal 16, no. 40 (October 3, 1885), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020; "Massachusetts Field Notes," The Woman’s Journal 16, no. 44 (October 31, 1885), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020.

[15] "West End Woman Suffrage League," The Woman’s Journal 18, no. 33 (August 20, 1887), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020.

[16] "West End Woman Suffrage League," The Woman’s Journal 18, no. 44 (November 5, 1887), Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, accessed January 10, 2020.

[17] Ruffin, "Trust the Women!"

[18] Ruffin, "Trust the Women!"

[19] "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Homespun Heroines and Other Women of Distinction, ed. Hallie Quinn Brown, 151-153.

[20]  Mark Schneider, Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 1890-1920 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997), 101-102; "New England Club Conference," The Woman’s Journal 32, no. 16 (April 20, 1901); "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin," Sketches of Representative Women of New England, ed. Julia Ward Howe, 335-339.

[21] Schneider, Boston Confronts Jim Crow, 101-102; Holden, "‘Earnest Women Can Do Anything.’"

[22] Booker Washington, A New Negro for a New Century: An accurate and up-to-date record of the upward struggles of the Negro Race (Chicago: American Publishing House, 1900), 390-392.