page_title: Josephine Silone Yates
section_title: The Women's Club movement
hierarchical_section_title: Josephine Silone Yates / The Women's Club movement
caption_attribution_description: English: Josephine Silone-Yates
context_page_description: Josephine Silone Yates, trained in chemistry, was one of the first black professors hired at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, and, upon her promotion, the first black woman to head a college science department. She may have been the first black woman to hold a full professorship at any U.S. college or university.
  Yates was also significant in the African-American women's club movement. She was a correspondent for the Woman's Era and wrote for other magazines, sometimes using the pseudonym Mrs R. K. Potter. Yates was instrumental in establishing women's clubs for African-American women: she was the first president of the Women's League of Kansas City and the second president of the National Association of Colored Women.
context_section_description: In Kansas City, Josephine Silone Yates became active in the African-American women's club movement. She was a correspondent for the Woman's Era (the first monthly magazine published by black women in the United States), and also wrote for the Southern Workman, The Voice of the Negro, the Indianapolis Freeman, and the Kansas City Rising Son, under her own name and the pseudonym "R. K. Porter". Racial uplift was one of many topics Silone Yates spoke and wrote about. She was identified as an exemplar of her race and included as one of 100 of "America's greatest Negroes" in Twentieth Century Negro Literature; or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro in 1902. Her paper addressed the question "Did the American Negro make, in the nineteenth century, achievements along the lines of wealth, morality, education, etc., commensurate with his opportunities? If so, what achievements did he make?" She also published poetry, including "The Isles of Peace", "The Zephyr", and "Royal To-Day".
  Josephine Silone Yates helped to found the Women's League of Kansas City, an organization for the self-help and social betterment for African-American women, and became its first president in 1893. In 1896 the Women's League joined the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), a federation of similar clubs from around the country. Silone Yates served with the NACW for four years as the treasurer or vice-president (1897 to 1901) and for four years as president (1901 to 1904).
  A testament to Yates' accomplishments and acclaim may be found in a speech presented by Anna Julia Cooper in 1893 at the World's Congress of Representative Women in Chicago:
  In organized efforts for self help and benevolence also our women been active. The Colored Women's League, of which I am at present corresponding secretary, has active, energetic branches in the South and West. The branch in Kansas City, with a membership of upward of one hundred and fifty, already has begun under their vigorous president, Mrs. Yates, the erection of a building for friendless girls.
caption: Josephine Silone-Yates, ca 1900
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