YATES, JOSEPHINE SILONE (15 November 1859–3 September 1912), pioneering African American educator, writer, and activist. Her intellectual gifts were manifest so precociously—she was said to have embarked upon the study of physiology, physics, and advanced math by the age of nine—that soon she was shuttling between relatives up and down New England in search of educational opportunities commensurate with her ability. At the age of eleven, for example, Silone lived with her uncle and attended the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia, before moving to Newport, Rhode Island, to live with a maternal aunt in order to attend a prestigious local high school. Silone, the only Black student, graduated valedictorian of her class in 1877.
Silone continued her education at the Rhode Island State Normal School, where she studied to become a teacher. After receiving her certification—and thereby becoming the first Black teacher eligible to work in Rhode Island public schools—she nevertheless decided to move to Missouri to join the faculty at Lincoln University, a Black land-grant university founded by a White abolitionist Union soldier after the Civil War. At Lincoln, Silone instructed students in science, English, and drawing. In 1886 she was promoted to head of the natural-sciences department, becoming the first Black woman to head a college science department.
In 1893 Silone became the inaugural president of the Women’s League of Kansas City, a “self-help” organization for African American women. The league, along with other similar clubs, joined the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) in 1896; Silone would become NACW president in 1901, a position she held until 1906. Throughout her tenure Silone was a prolific speaker and writer on issues related to “racial uplift,” in the parlance of the day.
After her husband died in 1910 Silone relocated back to Kansas City. She taught for a period at Lincoln High School before passing away a few years later at the age of fifty-three after a brief illness. The Indianapolis Freeman, a prominent Black newspaper, remembered her as an individual “who was especially concerned … for the betterment of colored women, and for the betterment of the race generally.”