Josephina St. Pierre Ruffin

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In: 19th Century Women, Civil War, Journalists, Women's Rights

Born in Boston, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (1842-1924) grew up in a family of fighters for justice, her father a leader in the Black community. So, it is not surprising that she devoted herself to bettering the standing and power of 19th century black women throughout her life. As a young, newly married woman, she and her husband, the first black graduate of Harvard Law School, resettled in Liverpool, England to protest the Dred Scott decision, which solidified slavery in the United States. They returned at the start of the American Civil War to speak out for abolition and to recruit black men to serveRead More →

Carrie Burnham Kilgore

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In: 19th Century Women, Lawyers, Women's Rights

Carrie (Caroline) Burnham Kilgore (1839-1909) was a woman of firsts. Born in a remote Vermont village, at age twelve, she was taken out of school when her parents died and put to work in the family woolen mill. But her desire to learn was too strong. At fifteen, she began teaching at local schools and doing domestic work to pay the tuition to study the classics at a local academy and then two seminaries. Illness from typhoid, sent her to live with her sister in Wisconsin, where she recovered and took up teaching again. When a male high school teacher fell ill, she took overRead More →

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In: 19th Century Women, Business, Women's Rights

Not Just a Madam: Lula White of Basin Street Getting to know Lula White (c.1868-1931) means getting to know her world. In the thirty-eight block New Orleans “red light district” of Storyville, and between 1897 and 1917, there were too many houses of prostitution to come up with an accurate count. Reigning over them all was Lula White’s house, Mahogany Hall. Reigning over Mahogany Hall, was Lula.  Lula seized the crown of the New Orleans sex trade because she put her eye to the keyhole that was New Orleans and shrewdly assessed the world she saw through it. She had to have noted: Women asRead More →