Josephine Silone Yates (1852 or November 15, 1859 ; September 3, 1912) was an American professor, writer, public speaker, and activist.

"[8] Silone's uncle, Reverend John Bunyan Reeve, was the pastor of the Lombard Street Central Church in Philadelphia.

Reeve moved to Howard University, and as a result, Josephine went to live in Newport, Rhode Island with her maternal aunt, Francis I. Girard.

[1] Silone chose to attend the Rhode Island State Normal School in Providence to become a teacher, rather than pursue a university career.

[1] She was the first African American certified to teach in the schools of Rhode Island[2] and later earned a master's degree from the National University of Illinois.

[5] In 1879, Josephine Silone moved to Jefferson City, Missouri, to work as one of the first black teachers at Lincoln University.

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.

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.

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".

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?

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.

In 1908 she requested to resign due to illness, but the board of regents did not accept, and she stayed on as the advisor to women at Lincoln.