James Reese, was an American ragtime and early Black classical music (jazz) bandleader, arranger, and composer. He was the leading figure on the African American music scene of New York City in the 1910s.
Official Black History Month Thread (2015)
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Nathan Francis Mossell was a doctor who helped establish the first Black hospital in Philadelphia.
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Ahmet Ali Çelikten one of the first black military pilots in aviation history and was one of only two known black combat pilots in World War I (the other being Eugene Jacques Bullard).
Soprano Caterina Jarboro , was the first black singer to perform with an American opera company. Jarboro made her debut at the New York Hippodrome with Alfredo Salmaggi's opera company in 1933 in the title role of AIDA, headlining an otherwise all-white cast.
Ann Petry, First African American Woman with book sales topping 1 million.
Dr. Reva Kay Williams.......The first African American Woman Astrophysicist
Dr. Reva Kay Williams is the first person to successfully work out the Penrose Mechanism to extract energy from a black hole. She is the first Black American female Ph.D in Astrophysics.
Dr. Reva Kay Williams is the first person to successfully work out the Penrose Mechanism to extract energy from a black hole. She is the first Black American female Ph.D in Astrophysics.
Roland Hayes
The tenor Roland Hayes was the first African American man to win international fame as a concert performer. Hayes was born in Curryville, near Calhoun in Gordon County, on June 3, 1887, to Fanny and William Hayes, who were former slaves. When Hayes was eleven his father died, and his mother moved the family to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Hayes grew up singing African American spirituals that had been passed down for generations. In Chattanooga he sang in church and on the street for pennies. A music teacher was impressed by his singing ability and offered him music lessons. Hayes wanted an education, but he had to drop out of school to help support his family and worked at many jobs. When he was twenty, Hayes entered Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, as a preparatory student, for he had less than a sixth-grade education. He hired tutors to help him catch up academically, and eventually he became a Fisk student and a member of the famous Fisk Jubilee Singers. At the same time he worked as a servant in order to support himself.
Hayes then moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where he found a job singing at a silent movie theater. He had to sing offstage so that people could hear his voice but not see his skin color. While Hayes was in Louisville, the president of Fisk University invited him to be the lead tenor for the Fisk Jubilee Singers' tour in Boston, Massachusetts. He accepted the invitation, and the trip changed his life.
When the Jubilee Singers' trip was over, other choir members returned to Fisk, but Hayes stayed in Boston, determined to have a career on the concert stage. After working and saving his money for some time, he had earned enough to rent Symphony Hall in Boston and pay all of the expenses for his first concert. With hard work and persistence, he arranged and promoted his own concerts until he achieved a successful career as a classical concert singer. In time Hayes became a very popular performer, and he was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, and other great concert houses in America.
In 1920 Hayes performed his first European concert in London, England.While in London he received a message from King George and Queen Mary of England, requesting that he perform for them. He toured Europe several more times, singing in seven different languages, and by the late 1920s he had become the highest-paid tenor in the world. His concerts always included spirituals, which Hayes called Aframerican religious folk music. Because many of these songs had never been written down, Hayes arranged them for orchestral accompaniment. He made a number of recordings of classical music and spirituals and, as early as 1924, performed at least one concert before a desegregated audience in Atlanta.
Hayes married Helen A. Mann, and they had a daughter, Afrika. Hayes and his wife maintained residences in Brookline, Massachusetts, and in Curryville, Georgia, where they owned a 600-acre farm. Hayes's mother had been a slave on the farm, and Hayes had been born there.
An unfortunate racial incident involving Hayes's family occurred in Rome, Georgia, in July 1942 and made national newspaper headlines. After Hayes's wife and daughter sat in a whites-only area of a shoe store, they were thrown out of the store. Hayes later confronted the store clerk, and he and his wife were arrested by the local police. Hayes was also beaten. About a week later, in response to the incident, Governor Eugene Talmadge warned blacks who didn't agree with segregation "to stay out of Georgia." Talmadge promised, "We are going to keep the Jim Crow laws and protect them." Although Hayes claimed that he was not bitter, he and his family left Georgia not long afterward and eventually sold their farm in 1948.
In 1962 Hayes gave a concert at Carnegie Hall to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday and raise funds for the American Missionary Association College Centennials Fund. He spent his later years encouraging young musicians by serving as a mentor, giving freely of his talent, time, and financial resources to help them. He also taught at Boston University and received many honorary doctoral degrees and numerous awards,including the NAACP Spingarn Medal. Hayes gave his final concert in 1973 at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He died on January 1, 1977, in Boston and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in Dorchester, Massachusetts.
In 1991 the Georgia Music Hall of Fame inducted Hayes posthumously. In 1995 the Georgia Department of Natural Resources erected an official historic marker in Hayes's honor in Calhoun. The city of Calhoun chose to place the marker on property adjacent to the Calhoun Civic Auditorium because Hayes had performed in the old auditorium that had once stood there. The site is now designated as the Roland Hayes Park, and State Highway 156 West in Calhoun is named the Roland Hayes Parkway. In 2000 the Roland Hayes Museum opened in the Harris Arts Center in Calhoun, where concerts are held annually in his honor.
Harvey Gantt, the first African American admitted to Clemson University, begins classes at the South Carolina school. He would graduate two years later with honors and a degree in architecture and go on to serve two terms in the 1980s as the first black mayor of Charlotte, N.C.
Martin Delany, was an African-American abolitionist, journalist, physician, and writer, arguably the first proponent of American black nationalism. He was one of the first three blacks admitted to Harvard Medical School. He became the first African-American field officer in the United States Army during the American Civil War.
Thomas Bethune "Blind Tom"
Born into slavery, both blind and mentally challenged on May 25, 1849 to parents Domingo Wiggens and Charity Greene, Tom was considered useless by his white master Colonel James Bethune of Columbus, GA. He was allowed to remain with his mother, a house servant at the plantation's main house and was drawn to the sounds of the parlor piano while the seven Bethune children practiced their musical lessons and singing. Always showing an interest in sounds, before the age of five Tom was able to reproduce on the keyboard the chord sequences he heard exactly from memory.
By the age of six Tom began improvising on the piano and creating unique musical compositions as his genius became apparent to all. In fact, Tom was endowed with the ability to reproduce any composition note for note after hearing it only once. The children's musical teacher considered Tom's abilities "beyond comprehension," and urged he be exposed to fine music.
Colonel Bethune realized that Tom was anything but useless and, seeing a potential for profit, began an exploitation of the young prodigy. In 1858 Tom was contracted to a concert promoter and, separated from his family, toured hundreds of cities on a rigorous schedule of four shows per day. Tom even performed for President Buchanan at the White House and was referred to as "the greatest pianist of the age whose skills surpassed Mozart."
In January, 1861, after Georgia's secession from the Union, Tom and his manager were in New York but cancelled further engagements and returned to Georgia. Tom's talents were to be used to raise money for the Confederate cause and only toured the South during the war years.
One of Tom's most famous compositions "Battle of Manassas" was created by Tom after hearing newspaper accounts of the Civil War's first major engagement. The song, full of crashing crescendo's with fitting accents and emphasis, was a concert favorite throughout the South.
Late in the war, Colonel Bethune, well aware of the south's flagging fortunes, signed a contract with Tom's parents Domingo and Charity for $500.00 per year plus food and shelter until Tom reached the age of 21. Tom's performances would earn thousands and the Colonel kept the lion's share.
Colonel Bethune, through legal maneuvering, kept Tom on an indentured contract for many years and acted as his legal guardian. Tom would play concerts throughout Europe and Canada and as far south as South America. Notables of the age such as Mark Twain sang his praise. Tom would go on to master the coronet, French horn, and flute and obtain a repertoire of 7,000 songs.
Tom would continue performing for the rest of his life. His last days were spent in seclusion, playing the piano. Tom died on June 13, 1908 in Hoboken, N.J. and was laid to rest in Evergreen Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.
Peggy “Lady Bo” Jones One of the first female lead guitarists in rock & roll, Peggy Jones is most notable for her work in Bo Diddley’s backing band, for which she earned the affectionate — and appropriate — nickname Lady Bo
I implore every brother and sister to read "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"....
Walter Rodney -
Walter Rodney was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942. His was a working class family-his father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress. After attending primary school, he won an open exhibition scholarship to attend Queens College as one of the early working-class beneficiaries of concessions made in the filed of education by the ruling class in Guyana to the new nationalism that gripped the country in the early 1950s.
While at Queens College young Rodney excelled academically, as well as in the fields of athletics and debating. In 1960, he won an open scholarship to further his studies at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He graduated with a first-class honors degree in history in 1963 and. he won an open scholarship to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In 1966, at the age of 24 he was awarded a Ph.D. with honors in African History.
His doctoral research on slavery on the Upper Guinea Coast was the result of long meticulous work on the records of Portuguese merchants both in England and in Portugal. In the process he learned Portuguese and Spanish which along with the French he had learned at Queens College made him somewhat of a linguist.
In 1970, his Ph.D dissertation was published by Oxford University Press under the title, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800. This work was to set a trend for Rodney in both challenging the assumptions of western historians about African history and setting new standards for looking at the history of oppressed peoples. According to Horace Campbell "This work was path-breaking in the way in which it analyzed the impact of slavery on the communities and the interrelationship between societies of the region and on the ecology of the region."
Walter took up his first teaching appointment in Tanzania before returning to his alma mater, the University of the West Indies, in 1968. This was a period of great political activity in the Caribbean as the countries begun their post colonial journey. But it was the Black Power Movement that caught Walter's imagination.
Some new voices had begun to question the direction of the post-independence governments, in particular their attitude to the plight of the downpressed. The issue of empowerment for the black and brown poor of the region was being debated among the progressive intellectuals. Rodney, who from very early on had rejected the authoritarian role of the middle class political elite in the Caribbean, was central to this debate. He, however, did not confine his activities to the university campus. He took his message of Black Liberation to the gullies of Jamaica. In particular he shared his knowledge of African history with one of the most rejected section of the Jamaican society-the Rastafarians.
Walter had shown an interest in political activism ever since he was a student in Jamaica and England. Horace Campbell reports that while at UWI Walter "was active in student politics and campaigned extensively in 1961 in the Jamaica Referendum on the West Indian Federation." While studying in London, Walter participated in discussion circles, spoke at the famous Hyde Park and, participated in a symposium on Guyana in 1965. It was during this period that Walter came into contact with the legendary CLR James and was one of his most devoted students.
By the summer of 1968 Rodney's "groundings with the working poor of Jamaica had begun to attract the attention of the government. So, when he attended a Black Writers' Conference in Montreal, Canada, in October 1968, the Hugh Shearer-led Jamaican Labor Party Government banned him from re-entering the country. This action sparked widespread riots and revolts in Kingston in which several people were killed and injured by the police and security forces, and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed.. Rodney's encounters with the Rastafarians were published in a pamphlet entitled "Grounding with My Brothers," that became a bible for the Caribbean Black Power Movement.
Having been expelled from Jamaica, Walter returned to Tanzania after a short stay in Cuba.. There he lectured from 1968 to 1974 and continued his groundings in Tanzania and other parts of Africa. This was the period of the African liberation struggles and Walter, who fervently believed that the intellectual should make his or her skills available for the struggles and emancipation of the people, became deeply involved.. It was from partly from these activities that his second major work, and his best known --How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - emerged. It was published by Bogle-L'Ouverture, in London, in conjunction with Tanzanian Publishing House in 1972.
This Tanzanian period was perhaps the most important in the formation of Rodney's ideas. According to Horace Campbell "Here he was at the forefront of establishing an intellectual tradition which still today makes Dar es Salaam one of the centers of discussion of African politics and history. Out of he dialogue, discussions and study groups he deepened the Marxist tradition with respect to African politics, class struggle, the race question, African history and the role of the exploited in social change. It was within the context of these discussions that the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was written."
Campbell also reports that " In he same period, he wrote the critical articles on Tanzanian Ujamaa, imperialism, on underdevelopment, and the problems of state and class formation in Africa. Many of his articles which were written in Tanzania appeared in Maji Maji, the discussion journal of the TANU Youth League at the University. He worked in the Tanzanian archives on the question of forced labor, the policing of the countryside and the colonial economy. This work-- " World War II and the Tanzanian Economy"-- was later published as a monograph by Cornell University in 1976".
Rodney also developed a reputation as a Pan-Africanist theoretician and spokes person. Campbell says that "In Tanzania he developed close political relationships with those who were struggling to change the external control of Africa He was very close to some of the leaders of liberation movements in Africa and also to political leaders of popular organizations of independent territories. Together with other Pan-Africanists he participated in discussing leading up to the Sixth Pan-African Congress, held in Tanzania, 1974. Before the Congress he wrote a piece: "Towards the Sixth Pan-African Congress: Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America."
In 1974, Walter returned to Guyana to take up an appointment as Professor of History at the University of Guyana, but the government rescinded the appointment. But Rodney remained in Guyana, joined the newly formed political group, the Working People's Alliance. Between 1974 and his assassination in 1980, he emerged as the leading figure in the resistance movement against the increasingly authoritarian PNC government. He give public and private talks all over the country that served to engender a new political consciousness in the country. During this period he developed his ideas on the self emancipation of the working people, People's Power, and multiracial democracy.
On July 11, 1979, Walter, together with seven others, was arrested following the burning down of two government offices. He, along with Drs Rupert Roopnarine and Omawale, was later charged with arson. From that period up to the time of his murder, he was constantly persecuted and harassed and at least on one occasion, an attempt was made to kill him. Finally, on the evening of June 13, 1980, he was assassinated by a bomb in the middle of Georgetown..
Walter was married to Dr Patricia Rodney and the union bore three children- Shaka, Kanini and Asha.
Walter Rodney -
Walter Rodney was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942. His was a working class family-his father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress. After attending primary school, he won an open exhibition scholarship to attend Queens College as one of the early working-class beneficiaries of concessions made in the filed of education by the ruling class in Guyana to the new nationalism that gripped the country in the early 1950s.
While at Queens College young Rodney excelled academically, as well as in the fields of athletics and debating. In 1960, he won an open scholarship to further his studies at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He graduated with a first-class honors degree in history in 1963 and. he won an open scholarship to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. In 1966, at the age of 24 he was awarded a Ph.D. with honors in African History.
His doctoral research on slavery on the Upper Guinea Coast was the result of long meticulous work on the records of Portuguese merchants both in England and in Portugal. In the process he learned Portuguese and Spanish which along with the French he had learned at Queens College made him somewhat of a linguist.
In 1970, his Ph.D dissertation was published by Oxford University Press under the title, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800. This work was to set a trend for Rodney in both challenging the assumptions of western historians about African history and setting new standards for looking at the history of oppressed peoples. According to Horace Campbell "This work was path-breaking in the way in which it analyzed the impact of slavery on the communities and the interrelationship between societies of the region and on the ecology of the region."
Walter took up his first teaching appointment in Tanzania before returning to his alma mater, the University of the West Indies, in 1968. This was a period of great political activity in the Caribbean as the countries begun their post colonial journey. But it was the Black Power Movement that caught Walter's imagination.
Some new voices had begun to question the direction of the post-independence governments, in particular their attitude to the plight of the downpressed. The issue of empowerment for the black and brown poor of the region was being debated among the progressive intellectuals. Rodney, who from very early on had rejected the authoritarian role of the middle class political elite in the Caribbean, was central to this debate. He, however, did not confine his activities to the university campus. He took his message of Black Liberation to the gullies of Jamaica. In particular he shared his knowledge of African history with one of the most rejected section of the Jamaican society-the Rastafarians.
Walter had shown an interest in political activism ever since he was a student in Jamaica and England. Horace Campbell reports that while at UWI Walter "was active in student politics and campaigned extensively in 1961 in the Jamaica Referendum on the West Indian Federation." While studying in London, Walter participated in discussion circles, spoke at the famous Hyde Park and, participated in a symposium on Guyana in 1965. It was during this period that Walter came into contact with the legendary CLR James and was one of his most devoted students.
By the summer of 1968 Rodney's "groundings with the working poor of Jamaica had begun to attract the attention of the government. So, when he attended a Black Writers' Conference in Montreal, Canada, in October 1968, the Hugh Shearer-led Jamaican Labor Party Government banned him from re-entering the country. This action sparked widespread riots and revolts in Kingston in which several people were killed and injured by the police and security forces, and millions of dollars worth of property destroyed.. Rodney's encounters with the Rastafarians were published in a pamphlet entitled "Grounding with My Brothers," that became a bible for the Caribbean Black Power Movement.
Having been expelled from Jamaica, Walter returned to Tanzania after a short stay in Cuba.. There he lectured from 1968 to 1974 and continued his groundings in Tanzania and other parts of Africa. This was the period of the African liberation struggles and Walter, who fervently believed that the intellectual should make his or her skills available for the struggles and emancipation of the people, became deeply involved.. It was from partly from these activities that his second major work, and his best known --How Europe Underdeveloped Africa - emerged. It was published by Bogle-L'Ouverture, in London, in conjunction with Tanzanian Publishing House in 1972.
This Tanzanian period was perhaps the most important in the formation of Rodney's ideas. According to Horace Campbell "Here he was at the forefront of establishing an intellectual tradition which still today makes Dar es Salaam one of the centers of discussion of African politics and history. Out of he dialogue, discussions and study groups he deepened the Marxist tradition with respect to African politics, class struggle, the race question, African history and the role of the exploited in social change. It was within the context of these discussions that the book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa was written."
Campbell also reports that " In he same period, he wrote the critical articles on Tanzanian Ujamaa, imperialism, on underdevelopment, and the problems of state and class formation in Africa. Many of his articles which were written in Tanzania appeared in Maji Maji, the discussion journal of the TANU Youth League at the University. He worked in the Tanzanian archives on the question of forced labor, the policing of the countryside and the colonial economy. This work-- " World War II and the Tanzanian Economy"-- was later published as a monograph by Cornell University in 1976".
Rodney also developed a reputation as a Pan-Africanist theoretician and spokes person. Campbell says that "In Tanzania he developed close political relationships with those who were struggling to change the external control of Africa He was very close to some of the leaders of liberation movements in Africa and also to political leaders of popular organizations of independent territories. Together with other Pan-Africanists he participated in discussing leading up to the Sixth Pan-African Congress, held in Tanzania, 1974. Before the Congress he wrote a piece: "Towards the Sixth Pan-African Congress: Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America."
In 1974, Walter returned to Guyana to take up an appointment as Professor of History at the University of Guyana, but the government rescinded the appointment. But Rodney remained in Guyana, joined the newly formed political group, the Working People's Alliance. Between 1974 and his assassination in 1980, he emerged as the leading figure in the resistance movement against the increasingly authoritarian PNC government. He give public and private talks all over the country that served to engender a new political consciousness in the country. During this period he developed his ideas on the self emancipation of the working people, People's Power, and multiracial democracy.
On July 11, 1979, Walter, together with seven others, was arrested following the burning down of two government offices. He, along with Drs Rupert Roopnarine and Omawale, was later charged with arson. From that period up to the time of his murder, he was constantly persecuted and harassed and at least on one occasion, an attempt was made to kill him. Finally, on the evening of June 13, 1980, he was assassinated by a bomb in the middle of Georgetown..
Walter was married to Dr Patricia Rodney and the union bore three children- Shaka, Kanini and Asha.
Mary Church Terrell
Mary Church Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the same year that president Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Her mother was a hair salon operator. The family lived in a mostly-white neighborhood, and the young Mary was protected in her early years from most experience of racism, even though, when she was three, her father was shot during the Memphis race riots of 1866. It was not until she was five, hearing stories from her grandmother about slavery, that she began to be conscious of African American history.
Her parents divorced in 1869 or 1870, and her mother first had custody of both Mary and her brother. In 1873, the family sent her north to Yellow Springs and then Oberlin for school. Terrell split her summers between visiting her father in Memphis and her mother where she had moved, New York City. Terrell graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio, one of the few integrated colleges in the country, in 1884, where she had taken the "gentleman's course" rather than the easier, shorter women's program.
Mary Church Terrell moved back to Memphis to live with her father, who had become wealthy, in part by buying up properties cheaply when people fled the yellow fever epidemic in 1878-1879. Her father opposed her working; when he remarried, Mary accepted a teaching position in Xenia, Ohio, and then another in Washington, DC. After completing her masters degree at Oberlin while living in Washington, she spent two years traveling in Europe with her father. In 1890, she returned to teach at the Washington, DC, school.
In Washington, she renewed her friendship with her supervisor at the school, Robert Heberton Terrell. They married in 1891. As was expected, Mary Church Terrell left her employment upon marriage. Robert Terrell was admitted to the bar in 1883 in Washington and, from 1911 to 1925, taught law at Howard University. He served as a judge of the District of Columbia Municipal Court from 1902 to 1925.
More About Mary Church Terrell:
The first three children Terrell bore died shortly after birth. Her daughter, Phyllis, was born in 1898. In the meantime, Mary Church Terrell had become very active in social reform and volunteer work, including working with black women's organizations and for women's suffrage in the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Susan B. Anthony and she became friends. Terrell also worked for kindergartens and child care, especially for children of working mothers.
Excluded from full participation in planning with other women for activities at the 1893 World's Fair, Mary Church Terrell threw her efforts into building up black women's organizations that would work to end both gender and racial discrimination. She helped engineer the merger of black women's clubs to form the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896. She was its first president, serving in that capacity until 1901, when she was appointed honorary president for life.
During the 1890s, Mary Church Terrell's increasing skill in and recognition for public speaking led her to take up lecturing as a profession. She became a friend of and worked with W.E.B. DuBois, and he invited her to become one of the charter members when the NAACP was founded.
Mary Church Terrell also served on the Washington, DC, school board, from 1895 to 1901 and again from 1906 to 1911, the first African American woman to serve on that body. In 1910, she helped found the College Alumni Club or College Alumnae Club.
In the 1920s, Mary Church Terrell worked with the Republican National Committee on behalf of women and African Americans. (She voted Republican until 1952, when she voted for Adlai Stevenson for president.) Widowed when her husband died in 1925, Mary Church Terrell continued her lecturing, volunteer work, and activism, briefly considering a second marriage.
She continued her work for women's rights and race relations, and in 1940 published her autobiography, A Colored Woman in a White World. In her last years, she picketed and worked in the campaign to end discrimination in Washington, DC.
Mary Church Terrell died in 1954, just two months after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a fitting "bookend" to her life which began just after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation
Sir William Arthur Lewis, a professor of economics at Princeton University, was the first African American to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. He received the award in 1979 which represents the highest level of accomplishment for an economist.
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Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was born into one of Boston’s leading families on August 31, 1842. St. Pierre’s mother was an English-born white woman and her father was from the island of Martinique, and founder of the Boston Zion Church. The St. Pierre’s sent their young daughter to Salem where the schools were integrated due mainly to the work of John Lenox Remond.
St. Pierre married George Lewis Ruffin at the age of 15. Ruffin was the first African American to graduate from Harvard Law School and later served on the Boston City Council, the state legislature, and became the first black municipal judge in Boston. After marriage, Mrs. Ruffin graduated from a Boston finishing school and completed two years of private tutoring in New York. During the civil war, the Ruffins were involved in various charity works, civil rights causes, and Mrs. Ruffin, especially, was involved in the women’s suffrage movement where she worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
From 1890 through 1897, Ruffin edited Women’s Era, the first newspaper published by and for African American women. She also founded, with her daughter Florida Ridely and Boston school principal Maria Baldwin, the “Women’s Era Club.” Believing that a national organization for black women was needed, she convened the first annual convention in 1895 which drew 100 women from 20 clubs across the United States. She named the organization the National Federation of Afro-Am Women, which a year later united with the Colored Women’s League to become the National Association of Colored Women. Mary Church Terrell was the organization’s president while Ruffin and several others served as vice-presidents.
Although the Women’s Era Club later disbanded, Ruffin remained active and became one of the founding members of the Boston NAACP in 1910. Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin died in Boston on March 13, 1924.