by Gudrun Hutchins

 Josephine Silone-Yates, the first African American woman certified to teach in Rhode Island Public Schools, also became America’s first Black female college professor and the first Black female to head a college science department. Aside from her role in what would later be called STEM education, she also was a national advocate for the rights of Black women.

Josephine Silone was born in 1859 in Mattituck, Long Island, New York. During her childhood the family lived with her maternal grandfather, a freed slave. Her mother taught her to read from the bible and she was a child prodigy in the sciences in grammar school, excelling in math, physics, and biology. At age eleven, Josephine was invited to move to Philadelphia to live with her uncle, Rev. J. B. Reeve, in hopes of finding greater educational opportunity. There she attended the highly regarded Institute for Colored Youth. Founded in 1837, the school offered a classic education designed to groom Black students for teaching careers.

Young Josephine would only have one year at the Institute when her uncle moved to Washington, DC, to become Dean of the Theological Department of Howard University. She returned home to her parents, but soon moved to Newport, RI, to live with a maternal aunt and enter Rogers High School as the only African American student in her class. While at Rogers, Silone rounded out her science studies with courses in chemistry. Her chemistry teacher saw such promise in Josephine that he pushed her to do extra lab work. Three years later, not only did she graduate as valedictorian and the high school’s first black graduate, she had completed her four-year high school program in three years.

Even though several of her teachers recommended that Silone pursue her education at a university, she was determined to become a teacher and enrolled in the Rhode Island Normal School – again as the only African American in her class. When the time came for her to take her examination for teacher certification, she aced it with the highest test score ever recorded in Newport, fulfilling her wish to become the first African American certified to teach in the public schools of Rhode Island.

Josephine Silone later received a Master’s Degree from the National University of Illinois and was hired as one of the first Black teachers at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. President Inman Edward Page considered it essential to replace some of the white faculty with Black teachers, as role models for the school’s Black students. The teachers lived on campus in the dormitories with the students. Upon her promotion to head the natural science department, she became the first Black woman to hold a full professorship at any American college or university. Some very grainy images of her chemistry laboratory show an equal number of young women and young men, with their backs to each other, working with similar equipment at chemical benches spaced approximately six feet apart. Both sexes are wearing large laboratory aprons to protect their clothing from chemical spills.

Silone was clear about her purpose in teaching. In a 1904 essay she wrote: “The aim of all true education is to give to body and soul all the beauty, strength, and perfection of which they are capable, to fit the individual for complete living.”

In 1889, at the age of 30, Josephine Silone married Professor William Ward Yates. Many schools prohibited married women from teaching, and upon her marriage Josephine gave up her teaching position at Lincoln. She moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where her husband was the principal of the Phillips School. From this time on she used the compound last name of Silone-Yates, although this was not common at the time. Her daughter, Josephine Silone Yates, was born in 1890. Her son, William Blyden Yates, was born in 1895. Josephine Silone Yates, who also taught at the Phillips School, soon became known and admired as one of the best teachers in the state of Missouri.

For most of her life Josephine Silone wrote while teaching. She penned newspaper and magazine articles often under the alias R. K. Potter. By 1900, she expanded her writing to include poetry, some of which was published.

Later in life, Josephine Silone-Yates was involved in clubs and organizations that fought for racial and social change. She helped to organize the Kansas City Women’s League and was elected as its first president in 1893. The membership increased to more than 150 under her leadership. After the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was established in 1896, Silone-Yates became one of its most dedicated supporters and served for four years as its President.

In 1992, Josephine Silone-Yates was recalled by the president of Lincoln University, to serve as an advisor to women. In 1902 she requested to resign due to illness, but the Board of Regents did not accept her resignation.

Her husband died in 1910 after which Silone-Yates chose to return to Kansas City. After a short illness, Josephine Silone-Yates died in Kansas City in 1912 at the age of 52.

Return to “Celebrating the Accomplishments of Women”

 

Return to Table of Contents