She was one of the first black public schoolteachers in Boston, and edited The Woman's Era, the country's first newspaper published by and for African-American women.

Her father, George Lewis Ruffin, was the first African-American graduate of Harvard Law School and the first black judge in the United States.

Her mother, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, was a noted African-American writer, civil rights leader, and suffragist.

[4] She taught at the Grant School from 1880 until her marriage in 1888 to Ulysses Archibald Ridley, owner of a tailoring business in downtown Boston.

Ridley and Ruffin reached out to clubs around the country to organize the First National Conference of the Colored Women of America.

[9] Speakers included the abolitionist and religious leader Eliza Ann Gardner, noted African-American scholar Anna J. Cooper, and Ella Smith, the first black woman to receive an M.A.

[10] During the conference, Ridley served on committees on lynching, the Georgia convict lease system, and Florida school laws.

[9] In 1923, Ridley conceived and directed an exhibit of "Negro Achievement and Abolition Memorials" at the Boston Public Library on behalf of the League.

She contributed to the Journal of Negro History, The Boston Globe, and other periodicals,[7] and also published a number of short stories.

She was a member of the Saturday Evening Quill Club, a literary group organized by Boston Post editor and columnist Eugene Gordon in 1925.

The Saturday Evening Quill, the group's annual journal, published the work of African-American women writers and artists, including Ridley, Helene Johnson, and Lois Mailou Jones.