SAMUEL YETTE: PHILOSOPHER-KING

SAMUEL YETTE: PHILOSOPHER-KING
Friday, January 28, 2011
By Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.

I was blessed to be a senior, sitting in a classroom in Alain Locke Hall, at Howard University’s, then brand-new, School of Communications in September 1972, when former Newsweek reporter, Samuel F. Yette, walked in the door to commence his inspiring career as a college professor.

Back then, I was also Editor-in-Chief of The Hilltop, the weekly student newspaper, founded by writer, Zora Neal Hurston, during her student days in the 1920s at Howard. Our new school’s Dean, Tony Brown, of PBS’s “Tony Brown’s Journal” had promised to vault our new school into the elite of journalism schools, so hiring Sam Yette, then the controversial author of The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America, seemed entirely consistent with that end.

Sam Yette was a great teacher, with a passion for learning. He was a stickler for punctuality and for preparation. Once weekly, we had a quiz, which he graded and recorded. In addition, we had reading assignments which required book reports on his desk. Reading the daily newspaper’s columnists, usually the Washington Post’s , was de rigueur, every day. Occasionally, they would visit us: William Raspberry, Bob Maynard, and the venerable Carl T. Rowan.

“Dr. Yette,” an honorific which our class bestowed upon him, as a token of our love, respect, and admiration, was “ole school” Tennessee, having graduated from Tennessee State University in Nashville. Hailing from Harriman, Tennessee, he fit the mold of Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, also from Tennessee, the first African American President of Howard, who was born in Paris, Tennessee. He taught us to strive to be the best, because, as blacks, we would encounter racial prejudice and discrimination in the field of journalism, as well as in the field of law, to which I aspired. He said two things which I yet recall: 1. “You can’t con an honest man;” and, 2. “There’s always room at the top.”

What I remember most, though, about the class, and what has endured with me till this day, is our reading of Plato’s Republic . Customarily wary of all things “Greek,” I was initially suspicious of the assignment, deeming it to be insufficiently “relevant” to a black university like Howard. But, that book, based on ancient Egyptian ideals of governance, was, and continues to be, an enduring treasure. I have applied its teachings in a variety of contexts; to myself, of course, and to the National Bar Association’s Law and Religion section, which I founded, in 2005, along with others. The “Guardians,” of whom Plato wrote, is the name which I gave to that section’s elected board of directors, who select the executive officers. Therefore, applying ancient Egyptian ideals, as gleaned from Plato, who was educated in Egypt, himself, to the National Bar Association, the first and largest association of black lawyers and judges, is part of the legacy of the great, Samuel Yette.

He was the “philosopher-king,” idealized in the Republic, and, which I have tried to emulate as an attorney, and now as a writer and African Methodist Episcopal Church preacher. From his tree fell mighty fruit, these nurture, and yet fall.
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