Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin Founds The Woman's Era Club and Newspaper

Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin of Boston founded the Woman's Era Club in 1894 and began publishing The Woman's Era, the first newspaper owned and operated by Black women in the United States. In 1895, responding to a Missouri newspaper editor's slander of Black women, she convened the First National Conference of Colored Women, which laid the groundwork for the National Association of Colored Women.