Lost Black History
By Don Valentine
Dr. Du Bois wrote a seminal essay for Black assimilation called “The Talented Tenth.” It’s one of seven essays included in the 1903, “The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of To-Day.” Booker T. Washington edited the book and contributed the first essay. Paul Laurence Dunbar, Charles W. Chesnutt, Wilford H. Smith, H. T. Kealing, and T. Thomas Fortune were the other Black intellectuals that participated.
This discussion about the Black future in society took place just 35 years after the slave emancipation. Both White and Black intellectuals were vexed about what to do with the (U.S. Census estimated) 10 million Blacks in the country. Mr. Washington advocated that Blacks focus on agricultural and mechanical skills. His opinion created the Tuskegee Institute and influenced several HBCUs to structure their curriculum in those fields.
Crème de la crème: Dr. Du Bois had a contrasting view to Mr. Washington’s thesis.
He wrote, “The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.” Dr. Du Bois advocated that the most intelligent and educated of the Black race could overcome the barriers to elevate the group. He elucidated, “Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way be more quickly raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and character? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth saving up to their vantage ground.”
That essay was published 220 years ago and the veracity of the “Talented Tenth” has come to fruition. Our intellectual “Crème de la crème” has led us from the servile labor of slavery to pillars that elevate Black and Whites alike. In that time we have had the keen leadership of a two term Black President, Dr. King, Justice Marshall, Justice Ketanji Brown, Madam Vice President Harris plus a long list of other members of the “Talented Tenth.”
When you review the chronicles of their deeds, it shows that Dr. Du Bois was an accurate prognosticator of the elements needed to advance our community. He predicted, “These figures illustrate vividly the function of the college-bred Negro. He is, as he ought to be, the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social movements.”
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