Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (born Aug. 31, 1842, Boston, Mass., U.S.—died March 13, 1924, Boston) was an American community leader who was active in the women’s rights movement and particularly in organizing African American women around issues of civic and cultural development.

Josephine St. Pierre was of mixed racial ancestry and acquired a limited education from schools in Salem and Boston. She was married at age 16 to George Lewis Ruffin, who later became Boston’s first African American municipal judge. In addition to rearing children, all of whom went on to professional success, Ruffin was active in a number of social causes, including woman suffrage and the advancement of black women. A charter member of the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association, she was acquainted with Julia Ward Howe and other leaders of the women’s movement. In 1894 she and her daughter organized the Woman’s Era Club, a civic association for African American women, which she presided over for nearly a decade and whose eponymous monthly publication she edited for several years. At a conference of representatives of other clubs that she convened in Boston in 1895, the National Federation of Afro-American Women was organized. When the federation merged with the Colored Women’s League of Washington the following year, Ruffin served as the first vice president of the newly formed National Association of Colored Women. She later helped found the Boston chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.