Black History Month: W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Talented Tenth” & the History of Black Education

Welcome to Black History Month 2023, with Diversity Explained. This is the second article in a series of four that will dive into fascinating stories of Black excellence in American history. Each week I’ll reflect on different dimensions of Black life – politics, business, the arts – and explore critical figures in their development.

Who is W.E.B. Du Bois?

When I was growing up, he was a household name. My dad never missed an opportunity to remind us he wrote his undergraduate dissertation on him – and got an A, thank you very much! – which meant many of Du Bois’ ideas trickled down into our conversations.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced “Due Boyss”) was a leading Black intellectual of the Progressive era (and beyond). He was the first Black man to receive a PhD from Harvard, helped co-found the NAACP, and over his 60-year career published some of the most important literature on race relations in America.

I grew up knowing about Du Bois not only because of my father, but also because his ideas still informed Black identity. As a radical opponent of assimilationist ideology, and an early proponent of Black autonomy, Du Bois represented the defiant, self-sufficient streak of Black American identity. His tireless campaigning against lynching and economic disenfranchisement made him an early champion of civil rights. But it was his brilliant, incisive mind that kept his ideas alive, well beyond the periods of their original relevance.

These ideas were controversial in his day, and some remain so. But he’s no longer the household name he once was. You may recognize him vaguely from a Black history unit in high school, but who remembers his actual ideas? And do we need to?

I was inspired to write about Du Bois for Black History Month because of a recent conversation I had about one of his most famous concepts: the Talented Tenth. This was language I was also familiar with from childhood, and I was surprised to learn that many of my colleagues – Black and not – had never heard it.

Du Bois himself didn’t coin the term – it was invented by Northern Liberals to refer to Black college graduates who would educate teachers and students in the Black South. But it later became so entwined with Du Bois’ personal ideology and public legacy that we cannot examine it without first understanding – in brief – who Du Bois was, where he came from, and what he was up against.

WEB Du Bois in 1907 (Wikimedia Commons)

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868 – 1963) was born in Massachusetts and attended Fisk University, a historically Black institution in Nashville, TN. He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1895. Trained in history and sociology, he set to work investigating and publicizing – through empirical data and observation, as well as blistering rhetoric – the condition of Black Americans at the time.

Du Bois grew up in the wake of the Civil War. His childhood saw the passing of the fragile, radical period of Reconstruction, which made many new resources available to Black people – especially in education. He also witnessed the confusion and retaliation that followed. The notorious Black Codes that passed in every southern state soon disenfranchised Black citizens in every facet of society. And many of the reforms that had opened politics, education, civic engagement and wealth creation to Black communities failed to make good on their promises.

In this chaotic atmosphere, Black leaders took different approaches to solving the “Negro Problem,” as Booker T. Washington’s landmark 1903 anthology framed it. Washington himself was an incredibly industrious reformer, educator, and entrepreneur. He founded the Tuskegee Institute after an Alabama state grant approved the founding of a trade school for Black men. But he was forced to network, raise money, and invest an astounding level of personal labor to turn it into a functioning institution.

Washington was in fact Du Bois’ great adversary in the educational debate of the era. He believed that, in the wake of slavery and Reconstruction, Black people needed to focus on learning practical skills and acquiring financial security before fighting for equality. This meant accepting discrimination and working through it in order to win the respect of the white population, who still touted pseudoscientific myths about the intellectual inferiority of the Black race (not to mention other races).

Du Bois, on the other hand, believed that deference to white expectations would hamstring the progress of the race, which he acknowledged was in a completely unfair position of destitution – economic and intellectual – after 250 years of slavery. But Du Bois refused to accept that white people were the best arbiters and directors of Black progress. While Du Bois saw the value of technical and industrial training, as well as the necessity of economic security, he defended empirical insight, the social sciences, and human reason as the best answers to the “race problem.”

The “Talented Tenth” and the role of education in the Black community

When he wrote “The Talented Tenth” in 1903 for The Negro Problem, Du Bois was wrestling with all these seemingly intractable issues.

“The Talented Tenth” reflects one side of a stormy debate about the role of education in Black Americans’ lives. From Du Bois’ perspective, Black people had been denied the fundamental humanity and civilization that education affords. And the late 19th century focus on what we call “vocational training” was (perhaps inadvertently) preventing us from accessing education that helped us become better human beings, as opposed to money-making cogs:

“Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools—intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it—this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.”

(“The Talented Tenth,” 1903)

For Du Bois, whether students were engaged in learning to read, working a farm, or studying higher mathematics, education had a higher purpose in civilizing and elevating them. “Intelligence, sympathy, and knowledge of the world” were the real end-goal of education – not merely the acquisition of skills or the earning of money.

The Negro Problem, published in 1903 by Booker T. Washington, with the original “Talented Tenth” essay by Du Bois.

His original assertion was that only a “Talented Tenth” of the Black population – at the time – would be ready or willing to pursue the kind of higher education that teaches people how to live, not just how to work. This Talented Tenth had to have the character, intellectual appetite, and leadership qualities that would, through the process of higher education, convert them into exceptional educators.

Du Bois’ emphasizes the need for exceptional educators, because he was convinced that whether the Talented Tenth was teaching at elementary, secondary, trade, or college levels, a classical, humanistic education was essential. Only by steeping themselves in the value of a liberal arts education could they hope to pass on its civilizing and edifying benefits to the masses.

Du Bois spends the initial third of the essay simply defending the existence of exceptional Black people in American history and contemporary society. It’s amazing to us today that he even has to prove that Black people are exceptional enough to be our own leaders. But those were the assumptions and prejudices he was up against.

He spends the rest of the essay looking at the recent history of Reconstruction, the numbers of Black college graduates it produced, and the impact both had on their communities. Over 50% of these graduates had gone on to become educators, sacrificing their personal interests to return to their communities and help educate millions of Black people at all levels.

In the Black South in particular, these educators had gone on to train thousands of teachers at all levels, allowing millions of Black people to access some form of education. According to Du Bois, this correlated to a significant increase in Black wealth and home ownership from the 1870s to 1900. The higher education of the Talented Tenth had also led to an intangible reinvestment in their communities:

“Knowledge of life and its wider meaning, has been the point of the Negro’s deepest ignorance, and the sending out of teachers whose training has not been simply for bread winning, but also for human culture, has been of inestimable value in the training of these men.”

(“The Talented Tenth,” 1903)

Du Bois insisted on the value of the “Talented Tenth” for Black advancement by proving it out in hard numbers. But he also defended the humanistic value of education in ideal terms. The humanity that had been denied to Black people for so long was available to them now, if only the Talented Tenth would help them access it. Black and white America had to acknowledge this Talented Tenth existed and that they deserved access to higher education and leadership.

The controversial legacy of Du Bois and the “Talented Tenth”

Given that he was writing at a time when only 1 out of 3 Black children attended any form of school – and even then often for only a couple of months – it seems to me Du Bois conceived a critical defense for the transformative power of education and Black people’s right to it.

At the time, many uneducated Black citizens weren’t allowed to participate politically. At the time, there were less than 3,000 living Black college graduates. At the time, the proportion of Black students in secondary school hadn’t changed in 20 years.

Du Bois was crusading against a crisis of education and dehumanization. And when you read the “Talented Tenth” essay today, his arguments feel both idealistically uplifting and extremely tactical. His fundamental point – that we cannot reap the rewards of a good education without good educators – echoes our own debates about student success today.

That is not to say there isn’t plenty in the original text that doesn’t stand the test of the time. Du Bois routinely refers to Black people as a “race of ex-slaves,” and while he claims he believes in the value of vocational training, it’s clear he places the liberal arts far above any technical or industrial expertise. Or as he put it: “The object of all true education is not to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men.”

That elitist view of higher education as the destiny of a select few left the “Talented Tenth” with a tricky legacy. While Du Bois’ ultimately sought to defend the exceptional abilities of Black people and their leadership potential, his argument morphed over time into the idea that only a select echelon of Black college graduates were worthy of leadership.

A 1929 meeting of the NAACP in Cleveland, Du Bois is fifth from the left in front row (History Archives of US House of Representatives)

The concept of the “Talented Tenth” doesn’t sit very well with contemporary ideas of how people can achieve wealth, education, influence, or positions of leadership. A college education is not the only route to these socially desirable accomplishments, and we don’t consider the humanities the sole path to self-actualization or success. Plus, no one today would question the idea that Black people are leaders in our own community (and everywhere).

Times have changed. And yet, we can’t ignore the reality that unequal educational outcomes persist. 28% of Black adults in America have bachelor’s degrees, compared with 42% of white people and 61% of the Asian population. White students are 2.5x more likely to finish their degrees than Black students are. This is due both to financial pressures and because the public K-12 system does a comparatively poor job of preparing Black and Latin American students for college. When Black students do graduate college, they are much more likely to default on educational loans within 12 years. Which means our economy and policymakers are not making good on the promise of a college education – namely, higher pay at better jobs. The result is that many students (of all races) are forced to question why they should bother.

That said, I’m not sure I agree with Du Bois that it is the responsibility of talented Black individuals to sacrifice their own lives in the interest of remedying education, income, and employment disparities. These issues are not only Black people’s problems. They are everyone’s problems, and they are tied directly to the legacy of anti-Black discrimination in this country. 

Obviously, the argument for a college-educated “Talented Tenth” no longer makes arithmetic sense when 30% of us have achieved the distinction. But perhaps more importantly, we have grown far beyond the need to prove ourselves. If all citizens are responsible for civic engagement, economic vitality, and sustainable growth in the United States – as well as the pursuit of our own happiness – then we are all responsible for addressing the racial disparities in our educational system. Even Du Bois himself eventually saw this and revised his Talented Tenth concept in favor of solidarity and cooperation across racial groups.

120 years ago, Du Bois closed his essay by repeating its opening line: “The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.” I say instead: we don’t need “saving.” What we need are equitable practices that allow as many Black people as possible to reach our exceptional, undeniable potential.

And it can’t possibly fall to us alone to make that happen.

Porter Braswell