George Lewis Ruffin

George Lewis Ruffin (December 16, 1834 – November 19, 1886) was an African-American barber, attorney, politician, and judge. In 1869, he graduated from Harvard Law School, the first African American to do so. He was also the first African American elected to the Boston City Council. Ruffin was elected in 1870 to the Massachusetts Legislature. In 1883, he was appointed by the governor Benjamin Franklin Butler as a judge to the Municipal Court, Charlestown district in Boston, making him the first African American judge in the United States. He married 16 year-old Josephine St. Pierre in 1858. Florida Ruffin Ridley was one of their children.

Biography

Ruffin was born to George W. (1800–1863) and Nancy Lewis Ruffin (1816–1874) in Richmond, Virginia as a free person of color, of African and European ancestry. The city had a large free Black community. His family moved to Boston in 1853, where he was educated in the public schools.

He supported Benjamin F. Butler in Butler's 1871 campaign for governor, and on November 7, 1883, he was appointed by then Governor Butler as a judge of the Municipal Court, Charlestown district. He was the first African American justice to hold office in New England. and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Introduces book by Douglass In 1881, Ruffin provided the introduction to The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, written by himself, for its first edition by Park Publishing Co., Hartford. Therein, he situated the book in its historical context, described its author, and quickly sketched the major events of his momentous life. From his personal witness, Ruffin narrated a scene of the courage and resolve shown by Douglass in the face of an angry mob, at Tremont Temple in 1860.

Legacy and honors In 1984, the George Lewis Ruffin Society was founded in his honor at Northeastern University to support minorities studying in the Massachusetts criminal justice system.