How African American W.E.B. DuBois And His "Talented Tenth" Concept Led To The Creation Of Historically Black Greek Letter Organizations (YouTube videos and two article excerpts)

Reading Through History, Aug 27, 2020

This video gives a brief description of the life and achievements of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois. 

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This is the first post in an ongoing pancocojams series about "The Talented Tenth" and "Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity/The Boule". Click that tag below to find other posts in this series.

This post showcases two YouTube videos of W/E.B. DuBois and presents information about DuBois.

The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, and educational purposes.

Thanks to W.E.B. DuBois for his legacy. Thanks to all those who are associated with these videos and thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.

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SHOWCASE VIDEO #2 - W.E.B. Du Bois: The New Negro at The 1900 Paris Exposition

Black History in Two Minutes or so, Dec 18, 2020

At the turn of the twentieth century, W. E. B. Du Bois curated an exhibit at the Paris Exposition in France entitled “The Exhibit of American Negroes.” The exhibition used photographs to disrupt the negative imagery that was used to depict black Americans at the time.

With over 45 million visiting the exhibit, Du Bois was able to put the dignified black person front and center on an international scene. This illuminating experience propelled the “New Negro” movement in the United States, highlighting a sharp contrast from the Jim Crow agenda being pushed elsewhere. Du Bois would continue his excellence as an author, historian and activist, paving the way for other pro-black entities to exist.

In this episode of Black History In Two Minutes or So hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr., with additional commentary from Rhae Lynn Barnes of Princeton University, Chad Williams of Brandeis University, and Farah Griffin of Columbia University, we celebrate an American hero who successfully elevated and illuminated the black experience for the world to see.

Black History in Two Minutes (or so) is a 2x Webby Award winning series....

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EXCERPTS ABOUT W.E.B. DUBOIS
Excerpt #1
From https://www.diversityexplained.com/read/blackhistorymonthdubois "BLACK HISTORY MONTH: W.E.B. DU BOIS’ “TALENTED TENTH” & THE HISTORY OF BLACK EDUCATION"
by Porter Braswell, 2022 ..."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?

[…]

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

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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."...

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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."

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Excerpt #2
From https://www.aaihs.org/an-alternative-view-of-du-boiss-talented-tenth/

An Alternative View of Du Bois’s Talented Tenth By Stephanie Shaw  February 19, 2018 2

 *This post is part of our online forum on W.E.B. Du Bois @ 150.

 Published by AAIHS*

 *AAIHS= African American Intellectual History Society

"W. E. B. Du Bois published one of his most well-known and widely debated ideas in his 1903 essay titled “The Talented Tenth.”1 In it, he argued for the higher education of a tenth of the Black population from among whom would come the leaders of the race. Many scholars have concluded that it was an elitist theory that privileged the Black elite at the expense of all others. This discussion, however, offers a different perspective based on Du Bois’s training in philosophy and contends not only that his Talented Tenth was a parallel to Plato’s Philosopher Rulers (in The Republic, especially parts III, IV, VII, VIII), but that it was a radical proposal about how to reorder a society that restricted Black people’s opportunities, denied them civil rights, and even took their lives seemingly on a whim.

In Plato’s ideal republic, there was, indeed, a hierarchical society at the top of which were the Rulers who made the laws, organized the economy, and did things that we think of as in the purview of “the government.” After the Rulers and their Auxiliaries (who executed and enforced the rules), was the third group of people—workers. They included carpenters, bakers, shoemakers, and a variety of people of meager means, but workers also consisted of teachers, physicians, business owners, and other professionals. Some of these workers were people of substantial means, but the Rulers were obligated to prevent the development of extremes of wealth and poverty among individuals. They also had to make it possible for all people to live life. Their most important job was to create a good—just—society, making the Rulers a more ennobled class of people than we have regularly assumed them to be.

Even the process of their becoming leaders, mitigated the possibility of the Rulers becoming an exclusive clique. Wealth, family, and connections could not guarantee one a place among Plato’s Rulers, and neither poverty nor the lack of social connections or a lofty family pedigree could bar one from the group. The Rulers came to their position based on their education, experience, disposition, and character, and anyone could ultimately become one because everyone started out in the same educational system, pursuing the same course, advancing according to their ability. After finishing the formal schooling process and completing a mandatory two-year military stint, the graduates worked for the next fifteen or so years, during which time some of them would gain the experience, vision, patience, courage, wisdom—the character—to be among those from whom the Philosopher Rulers would come. It was a true merit system.

People could, however, be excluded from the leadership positions. A person’s desire to become a ruler could effectively eliminate him from the potential candidates. People who wanted to be rulers probably lusted after power and would not likely make good leaders. One who aspired to being rich would not be chosen. And those who were chosen could not accept pay for the work; money could spoil their vision, make them self-interested, and render them too vulnerable to special interests to be involved in politics. The primary concern of those who would be Rulers had to be the good of the group, the Republic. The potential and actual members of this group simply had to be talented, selfless, manifest certain abilities and dispositions, and be committed to goodness or justice.

Du Bois’s and Plato’s proposals further challenge the charge of elitism. First, both insisted on having publicly funded schools and colleges available to all and adequate training in all areas of work, including those that did not require a university education. Both men were adamant about the danger of installing people in positions for which they were not trained. Still, both proposals saw higher education as especially important. The ability to think for oneself was important to both philosophers, and both understood that the goal of education was not the work that it trained people to perform, but the life that work created. As Du Bois put it in 1903, “we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.” And it was the college-trained teachers who would keep those means directed toward the proper ends. For Du Bois, the job of these teachers was “to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented Tenth to leadership.”

In 1948, Du Bois reflected on and amended his original ideas about the Talented Tenth in a speech before the Boulé (Sigma Pi Phi), arguably the most elite Black organization in the country at the time. He was more, not less, insistent on the importance of The Talented Tenth. He wrote, “Willingness to work and make personal sacrifice for solving these problems [lynching, disfranchisement, segregation] was of course, the first prerequisite and sine qua non.” He added, “I did not stress this [in 1903], I assumed it.” He encouraged the expansion of the fraternity that he was addressing, but insisted that wealth should not be the only criteria for membership:

This new membership must not simply be successful in the American sense of being rich; they must not all be physicians and lawyers. The [people] . . . admitted must be those who . . . do not think that private profit is the measure of public welfare.

He sought “honest” and “self-sacrificing” men, describing it as “a question of character” and about which he admitted, “I failed to emphasize in my first proposal of a Talented Tenth.” Further challenging the charge of elitism, Du Bois made it clear that he was not counting on the Boulé members to fulfill the mandates of his Talented Tenth. .He announced: “What the guiding idea of Sigma Pi Phi was, I have never been able to learn.  I believe it was rooted in a certain exclusiveness and snobbery for which we all have a yearning even if unconfessed.” He accused them of manifesting an “unconscious and dangerous dichotomy” of possessing an “identity with the poor” while “act[ing] and sympathiz[ing] with the rich.”…

He ended the commentary with a profoundly pessimistic declaration that simultaneously reflected badly on the character of the Boulé members: “Naturally, I do not dream that a word of mine will transform, to any essential degree, the form and trends of this fraternity, but I am certain the idea called for expression and that the seed must be dropped whether in this or other soil today or tomorrow.” In short, if the Boulé members saw themselves as de facto members of Du Bois’s Talented Tenth, they were clearly mistaken.

If we view it in a particular way, Du Bois’s Talented Tenth proposal was actually quite radical. Consider, for example, that according to 1986 U. S. Census data it was not until 1984(!) that at least ten percent of Black Americans over the age of 25 had completed at least four years of college (p. 134). What if ten per cent of Black Americans had been college trained three generations earlier (when Du Bois first proposed The Talented Tenth) and trained for and committed to the creation of a good—just—society? Would it have taken two whole generations more for the eruption of the modern civil rights movement or the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts? Would they have even been necessary?

Even though it is a question that we cannot answer, considering the segregation, disfranchisement, underfunding of Black public schools, and the specter of lynching that most Black people lived every day at the turn of the twentieth century, it is a question worth considering. In that context, it is difficult to imagine a more radical proposition than one that encouraged and sought to prepare people for a lifetime of learning and service to others and a commitment to the creation of a good, just, society."
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'This essay is adapted from Stephanie Shaw, W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013). ↩

Stephanie Shaw is Professor of History at the Ohio State University. Her major fields of study include American Women’s, Labor, and Social history. Shaw is the author of What a Woman ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and W. E. B. Du Bois and The Souls of Black Folk (University of North Carolina Press, 2013). She is currently completing a book on slave families and communities in the nineteenth century South."

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