Biography

Yates was born in Brown Settlement, Mississippi in 1906. In his teens, Yates road the rails to Chicago where he found work in a meatpacking plant. He was later employed as a railroad dining car waiter and was a founding member of the Dining Car Waiter's Union. Yates was active in the unemployment councils, the Scottsboro defense campaign, and the movement to free Angelo Herndon. During the 1930s, Yates moved to New York to find work. During this period, Yates became involved in Communist activities; he joined the party in 1936 and served as Branch Secretary. Yates departed for Europe, on the SS Ile de France, on February 20, 1937. In Spain, Yates was assigned to transport units. Hospitalized because of illness, Yates returned from Spain aboard the SS Lafayette on February 16, 1938. Yates served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He trained at Fort McClellan in Alabama and then served in the Signal Corps at Davis Monthan Field near Tucson, Arizona. In February 1943 Yates was transferred from his original unit just before it was shipped overseas. In a letter to the VALB office he reported having learned from good sources it was because I fought in Spain. Following the war Yates studied radio repair and in 1948 opened his own radio repair business. During the 1960's he was an active member of the International Brotherhood of Railroad Porters and head of the Chelsea-Village NAACP branch in New York. In the 1986 Yates published his autobiography From Mississippi to Madrid. The following year he was invited to join the Molasses Pond Writers Workshop located in Franklin Maine where he was a writer in residence until 1992. Yates died in October 1993. In 1995, the Molasses Pond Writers Retreat established an annual award in his honor.

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