Originally established as a monthly Boston newspaper, it became distributed nationally in 1894 and ran until January 1897, with Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin as editor and publisher.

[1] The Woman's Era played an important role in the national African American women's club movement.

Advertisements for local social events such as carnivals, rosebud teas, and bake sales are placed throughout the newspaper alongside the promotion of vendor goods for music, courses, clothing, real estate, among other things.

Wells,[4] a series called "Eminent Women" that included a profile of Harriet Tubman, and criticism of other activists who disappointed them, such as Frances Willard and Albion W. Tourgée.

[7]The editor concluded that the only solution was for the federal government to intervene: It can go to war, spend millions of dollars and sacrifice thousands of lives to avenge the death of a naturalized white citizen slain by a foreign government on foreign soil, but cannot spend a cent to protect a loyal, native-born colored American murdered without provocation by native or alien in Alabama.