Women of distinction/Chapter 34
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MRS. JOSEPHINE ST. PIERCE RUFFIN
Was born in Boston at a time when her fair-haired English mother and swarthy Negro-Indian father could not walk together nnmolested even in the streets of the liberal (?) minded old Bay State. Her primary education was begun in the common schools, but after that she ran against a snag in the shape of a State law which prohibited the commingling of white and colored children in the higher schools. Josephine, unconscious of any law or reason to prevent this, had boldly and proudly entered the Franklin Grammar School, but at the end of six happy, triumphant months was brought face to face with that hydra-headed evil, race prejudice, the monster which has bruised the heart and broken the ambition of so many aspiring colored youth. Then began a contest; the law and the school committee on one side, and the then widowed mother and eight-year-old child on the other; it is needless to say which side won in this unequal fight (albeit the sympathy and moral support of the full corps of teachers of the school and that of the chairman of the school board was given to the legally weak side), for did not the law stand on the statute book and had not a saintly, philanthropic, but short-sighted soul, by the name of Smith, given a building to be forever set apart for the benefit of colored children solely?
MRS. JOSEPHINE ST. PIERCE RUFFIN.
Strange to say, at this time none of the cities and towns adjacent to Boston made any discrimination on account of color in the schools; so the next four years of the girl’s life were spent in the schools of Charlestown and Salem, Mass.; then after two more years under private teachers in New York, she returned to her home just in time to celebrate the triumphant termination of the untiring efforts of the loyal men and women of Boston (white and colored) to blot out from the book the obnoxious law of a State whose founders were supposed to be nothing if not just. And so it came about that the child who had helped to bury the old law was on hand at the birth of the new order, and led the delegation of waiting girls who entered "old Bowdoin on the hill," when her doors swung open to all and the glorious reign of the now truly free common schools of Massachusetts began. Before she was sixteen Josephine St. Pierce was married to George L. Ruffin, who, at the time, was a recent graduate of the Chapman Hall School. The high-spirited young couple, with a keen appreciation of the pains and penalties of being "colored" in slavery-cursed America, decided that they would not begin their married life in the miscalled "land of the free," so they went straight from the altar to New York, and from thence sailed away to England. After five months of foreign travel and observation Mr. and Mrs. Ruffin returned to America, satisfied that, with all her advantages, America was the one place for young people with more ambition than money; then, too, at that day every person was needed to take his place and go down into "the valley of the shadow of death" that through a bloody war the nation might rise to freedom, and these voung people determined to dedicate themselves to the service of their people and the strict performance of every duty, the young wife and mother even giving her consent to the urgent request of the husband to let him go to the front with the afterwards famous Fifty-fifth Massachusetts Regiment, but when he presented himself as a volunteer he was rejected because of chronic near-sightedness. They afterwards became active members of that home guard who, through the medium of the Sanitary Commission, worked incessantly at home and at church, making, mending and praying for the soldiers at the front.
With the return of peace and prosperity came the opportunity to devote themselves to the making of their own and their children's lives an example and a stimulus to others; it was then (at the close of the Civil War) that Mr. Ruffin entered the Howard Law School, and at the same time such education of their children was begun as would enable them (the children) to compete for and hold an honorable place in the moral, intellectual and industrial life of their native city. The father lived just long enough to see his children all started on their different careers, and died one year after he had been made Judge of the Charlestown Court. Five years after the death of the husband and father the eldest born followed.
During the life of her husband Mrs. Rufifin's interests were so identified with his that the history of one is the history of the other. In the useful and progressive career of Judge Ruffin the counsel and support of his wife were great factors, and through him the two were in turn councilman, legislator, lawyer and judge. Since the death of her husband Mrs. Ruffin has been more than ever active in the charities and philanthropies which fill so large a place in the life of the true Boston woman. For fifteen years she has been one of the Board of Directors of the Moral Education Association of Massachusetts, and at one time its treasurer. She is also a member of the Board of the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association, one of the earliest and first of the members of the Associated Charities of Boston, and was recently made a member of the N. B. Women's Press Association. For one year Mrs. Ruffin was editor-in-chief of the Boston Courant, but lately felt compelled to resign the active management of this paper, the following being among the newspaper notices of her retirement. The Woman’s Journal says of her:
Mrs. Josephine St. P. Ruffin, who for some time was editor-in-chief of the Boston Courant, is taking a long vacation, rendered necessary by prostration from overwork. Mrs. Ruffin has unusual editorial ability and she made the Courant a leader among Afro-American papers and a credit to weekly journalism. It is announced that "it is not expected that Mrs. Ruffin will again resume the active management of the Courant, although it is her intention to be a contributor to its columns; the starting of a new and very comprehensive charitable work, together with her growing business of the care of the estates of widows and maiden ladies, promising to consume all her time this coming season."
RETIRES FROM ACTIVE SERVICE.
It is due the many inquirers as to whether Mrs. Ruffin is the editor of the Courant to state that early in June, owing to prostration from overwork in many directions, Mrs. Josephine St. P. Ruffin was compelled to take a long vacation from all work. Since that time the paper has been in the very efficient hands of Mr. Robert T. Teamoh, of the Boston Globe.
It is not expected that Mrs. Ruffin will again resume the active management of the Courant, although it is her intention to be a contributor to its columns; the starting of a new and very comprehensive charitable work, together with her growing business of the care of the estates of widows and maiden ladies, promising to consume all her time this coming season.
In personal appearance Mrs. Ruffin bears the reputation of being one of the handsomest women of Boston, her regular, commanding features, abundant black hair (now plentifully sprinkled with gray) and olive complexion making a noticeable and pleasing appearance.