Josephine Silone Yates Literary Author Series
 

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Josephine Silone Yates (1852 or November 15, 1859 – 1912) was one of the first black teachers hired at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri. President Inman Edward Page considered it essential to replace the previously white faculty with black teachers, as role models for the school's African American students. The teachers lived on campus in the dormitories with the students. Josephine taught chemistry, elocution, and English literature. Upon her promotion to head of the natural science department, she became the first black woman to head a college science department and 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 (the first monthly magazine published by black women in the United States) and wrote for other magazines as well. 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 (1893) and the second president of the National Association of Colored Women (1900–1904).

Browse the contents of Josephine Silone Yates Literary Author Series:

Terry Baker Mulligan
Jefferson City, MO- National best-selling author Terry Mulligan will visit the Lincoln University campus on March 12 and 13, 2015 as part of the Josephine Yates Literary Author Series and Women's History Month. Mulligan is the author of such pieces as "Sugar Hill: Where the Sun Rose Over Harlem" and "Afterlife in Harlem".
Judy Juanita
Jefferson City, MO- Novelist, Poet and Playwright, Author Judy Juanita will visit the Lincoln University campus on November 3rd and 4th, 2015 as part of the Josephine Yates Literary Author Series. Juanita is the author of "Virgin Soul", a novel of a young woman's life with the Black Panthers in the 1960s.
Kenn Bivins
Jefferson City, MO- Bestselling Author, Kenn Bivins will visit Lincoln University Missouri, November 1st-2nd, as the 2016 Josephine Silone Yates Literary Author Series featured Novelist. Bivins is the author of "the Wedding & Disaster of Felona Mabel", an epic redemption story that delves into the complexities of why love suffered from the past defines love expressed in the present.