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Reporting by Caitlyn Arnwine (formerly Caitlyn Cobb). Written in 2020. A reference list can be found at the bottom of the article.
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Today, February 7th, 2024, we honor the First National Conference of the Colored Women of America. Earlier, we focused on George H, White, the unsung hero who was the last of the Reconstruction Era Black Congressmen. He detailed brutal racial voter suppression that destroyed the Black vote. It would be another 91 years before another Black North Carolina Congressperson. One of the other articles this month took a look at the Black massacres that occurred after the 1860's, many of which were over voting. While many more massacres occurred after 1880's, the extreme concentration of Black massacres during this time period were specifically targeted against Black men exerting their right to vote under 15th amendment. Despite the horror that that article showed, I purposefully have inserted this article, just as George H. White and Ida B. Wells, to honor the wins of Black men and women during this time.
Held in August 1895 in Boston, Massachusetts, representatives from 42 African-American women's clubs gathered at this three-day organizing and strategy conference, the first of its kind in the United States. The goal of the conference was to create a national organization for Black women after Black women expressed via poll responses the need for such an organization in the early 1890's. The final tipping point was in 1895 when "an obscure Missouri journalist named John Jacks sent a letter to the secretary of the British Anti-Slavery Society, Florence Belgarnie. In the letter, Jacks criticized the anti-lynching work of Ida B. Wells, and wrote that black women had 'no sense of virtue' and were 'altogether without character'...
Soon after, [Boston activist Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin] organized a national conference in Boston, and asked clubs to send delegates. The first day was to be devoted to the business of organizing, and the second and third to 'vital questions concerning our moral, mental, physical and financial growth and well-being.' In the call, Ruffin explained the choice of venue: 'Boston has been selected as a meeting place because it has seemed to be the general opinion that here, and here only, can be found the atmosphere which would best interpret and represent us, our position, our needs, and our aims.'" (Revolvy, N.D.b)
Josephine Ruffin was a civil rights leader and suffragist. She founded the Woman's Era Club, an advocacy group for black women and the first Black women's club in Boston. (Revolvy, N.D.b)
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