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Professor Barnes

HIST 3100

Janauary 23, 2020

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Wiki Article

When you hear cvil rights movement you think of names like Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X. However, women played a major role during the civil rights movement as well. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (August 31, 1842 – March 13, 1924) (3) was an African-American publisher, journalist, civil rights leader, suffragist, and editor of the Woman's Era, the first national newspaper published by and for African-American women. She was born in Boston ,MA where she attended public schools in Charlestown and Salem. Soon after she continued her schooling at Bowdoin School. Later she married the first African American graduate from Harvard Law school. Ruffin began working with her husband to recruit black soldiers during the Civil War for the union army.(2) After the war she joined two other women and created the American Woman Suffrage Association in Boston, MA.

Joseephine St. Pierre's husband died in 1886. She then used her skills to start the country's first newspaper published by an Africa American woman called the Woman's Era. The newspaper called on black women to demand increased rights for their race, while promoting interracial activities. Although Josephine Ruffin socialized and worked together with white women reformers, the era of Jim Crow brought with it growing resistance to integration. In 1893 she founded the Woman's Era Club. It's motto was "Make the World Better." (2) In 1895, Ruffin organized the National Federation of Afro-American Women. Then in 1896, her organization merged with the Colored Woman's League to form the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC). Josephine was Vice-President. (3) 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."

St. Pierre Ruffin still remained active in the civil rights movement after the New Era club was disbanded. in 1910, helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She was one of the charter members of 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. Finally in 1995 she was abuducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Works Cited:

1. State House Women's Leadership Project (2008). "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin". Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved September 12, 2008.

2. Indiana Commission for Women (2003). "African American Women In History: Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924)". State of Indiana. Archived from the original on February 9, 2005. Retrieved September 12, 2008.

3. State House Women's Leadership Project (2008). "Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin". Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved September 12, 2008.