Claude was born in Gibson County, Tennessee, the second of five children of farmer Henry "Chess" Yates and Mary W Landrum.
He had recently retired from Southern Bell and been named president of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce in 1964 when all 15 public high schools lost their accreditation.
On January 19, 1965 Yates called a lunch meeting of the chamber at the Robert Meyer Hotel to decide on a course of action.
Coppedge, Gen. Maxwell Snyder, Harold Meyerheim, Joseph W. Davin, Thompson S. Baker, Richard Lewinson, Henry M. French and S. Kendrick Guernsey.
Those prominent business and civic leaders signed a 45-word petition to the Duval legislative delegation of Senator John E. Mathews and Representative Fred Schultz, that would later be dubbed the Yates Manifesto.
[3] In response, the 1965 Legislature created the Local Government Study Commission (LGSC) chaired by J.J. Daniel, who later became publisher of The Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville Journal.
The referendum passed and their Blueprint for Improvement has "since proven to be a national model for urban [consolidated] government", according to the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce.
[7][8] Claude J. Yates was a member and former Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Jacksonville Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, ca.