Josephine
St. Pierre,
was born in Boston on 31st August, 1842. Her mother was a white woman
and her father had been born in Martinique.
John
St. Pierre was a successful clothes dealer and 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 Josephine was sixteen she married George Lewis Ruffin, the first
African-American to graduate from Harvard
Law School. The couple were both active in the struggle against
slavery and during the Civil
War they helped recruit black soldiers for the Union Army.
Josephine also supported women's suffrage
and in 1869 joined with Julia Ward Howe
and Lucy Stone formed the American
Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) in Boston.
George Lewis Ruffin died in 1886. He had been a successful
lawyer and municipal judge and left his wife a considerable amount
of money. Josephine decided to use this to fund the Woman's
Era,
the country's first journal published by and
for African-American women. Edited by her daughter, Flora
Ruffin, the monthly magazine advocated women's
suffrage and equal civil rights.
In 1895 Ruffin organised the formation of the
National
Federation of Afro-American Women. The following year it 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.
Ruffin remained active in the struggle for equal rights and in 1910
helped form the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. Josephine
Ruffin,
co-founder of the
League of Women for Community Service, died in Boston on 13th March,
1924.
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