By Haley Plummer2025/2026 Power in Place Research Collaborator
Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin is not a household name, but this says more about the historical record than it does about her impact. Historical records rarely detail the lives of Black women. Though she has not received the same recognition as her white contemporaries, Ruffin’s work is impossible to dismiss. At the risk of anachronism (indeed, she self-identified as a suffragist and abolitionist), Ruffin was nothing short of an intersectional feminist. Her structured, community-based approach to activism stands as a model for activists and politicians today. Born in 1842 to a white English mother and a Black father of Martiniquan heritage, Ruffin experienced blatant racism throughout her childhood. After marrying George Lewis Ruffin, the first African American man to graduate from Harvard Law School, she moved with him to England in hopes of raising their children in a society without slavery. For reasons unknown, the family shortly returned to the United States, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. Ruffin undoubtedly carried her experience abroad with her as she embarked on her work in Boston, allowing her transatlantic understanding of racism to inform her intercommunal approach to activism. Utilizing her position as a member of Boston’s Black elite, Ruffin founded the Woman’s Era Club, the city’s first African American women’s club, and served as its president. She also launched The Woman’s Era, a joint newspaper first published on March 24, 1894. At a time when Black women were either erased or caricatured in the press, Ruffin understood that political power began with narrative power. For three years, The Women’s Era highlighted Black achievement, crusaded for an end to lynching, and celebrated progress toward universal women’s suffrage. It created space for women to exchange political ideas, spotlight (and critique) prominent political figures, and address issues ranging from etiquette to health and exercise. Ruffin treated journalism not as neutral reporting, but as tangible resistance. By controlling the means of storytelling, she challenged racist coverage in mainstream newspapers. This feels strikingly contemporary, as Black journalists and creators today continue to confront institutional racism and create alternative spaces where they can control their own narratives. Ruffin’s commentary was markedly sharp in an era when women were expected to be obedient and removed from political life. In a particularly passionate article, Ruffin wrote: “If laws are unjust, they must be continually broken until they are killed or altered. The world is turning a callous ear to appeals for justice; it is evident that the only way now to get what we want is to take it, even if we have to break laws in getting it.” Meek and subservient, she was not. Throughout her life, Ruffin expertly navigated respectability politics even as white women’s clubs actively excluded her. Her activism exposed fractures within the suffrage movement, most notably when the General Federation of Women’s Clubs rejected the Woman’s Era Club after discovering that it accepted women of color. Nevertheless, Ruffin persisted. She championed bridge-building across racial lines, collaborating with organizations such as the New England Women’s Club, the American Woman Suffrage Association, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association. For Ruffin, institutions were both sites of learning and weapons of resistance. Her commitment to collaboration with all women exemplified her belief in community-building as a form of activism. This model of community-centered philanthropy reminds me of today’s methods of grassroots organizing. Ruffin balanced an international perspective with a dedication to local-level initiatives, ultimately leveraging her education and social position to create new opportunities for Black women. Her life reminds us: lasting change comes when we build together, speak up, and refuse to let others define our story.
References
Alexander, William H., Charles H. Ford, and Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, eds. Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. https://research-ebsco-com.proxy.library.emory.edu/linkprocessor/plink?id=1385dadc-a32a-3fe8-ab6b-34f57fcee8a5. Terborg-Penn, Rosalyn. “African American Women and the Woman Suffrage Movement.” In One Woman, One Vote: Rediscovering the Woman Suffrage Movement, edited by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler, 147. Troutdale, OR: NewSage Press, 1995. “Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin | Massachusetts Women’s History Center.” 2025. Accessed October 25, 2025. https://www.mawomenshistory.org/josephine-st-pierre-ruffin. Sawaya, Francesca. Modern Women, Modern Work: Domesticity, Professionalism, and American Writing. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Streitmatter, Rodger. Raising Her Voice: African-American Women Journalists Who Changed History. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1994.
Haley Plummer is a rising Junior at Emory University, where she majors in History and minors in Latin American and Caribbean Studies on the pre-law professional track. She is passionate about visual culture, sustainable development, and community building. In the future, she'd like to pursue in the arts and culture nonprofit sector.