The age in which we live, inferior to many in some departments of human achievement, is yet an original one. It has its own character, its own genius, its own work, its own destiny, and being indeed the product of all time, inheriting the blessings and the banes of past ages, there is necessity that the men and the women of the present generation be acute and trained to disentangle the two elements, so as to accept the one and reject the other.—Rev. W. V. Tunnell1
In an essay published in 1903, Du Bois introduced a theory of group leadership that is popularly known as the theory of “the Talented Tenth.”2 The essay was, most of all, a plea for the support of higher education for black Americans, from among whom a “Talented Tenth,” 10 percent of the black population, would emerge as leaders of the race. The publication of The Souls of Black Folk, also in 1903, contributed to the popularization of the idea, no doubt in part because of its direct challenge to Booker T. Washington’s support of vocational and industrial education for black Americans and the extensive support that Washington’s programs attracted.
Du Bois’ idea was, however, much more than a reaction to Booker T. Washington. It was a philosophical ideal and a commitment so deep that in 1948, more than thirty years after Washington’s death and forty-five years after Du Bois published the first essay on the Talented Tenth, he revisited the idea in a major lecture. He spoke at Wilberforce University, the oldest black university in America, before the Nineteenth Grand Boulé Conclave of Sigma Pi Phi, indisputably the most elite organization of black Americans at the time. Although he also titled this later presentation “The Talented Tenth,” in it Du Bois revised his proportion, advocating this time for what he called “the ‘Guiding Hundredth.’”3
Scholars have regularly held up Du Bois’ Talented Tenth ideal as conservative and as evidence of his elitism. Political scientist and theorist Adolph Reed, who sees Du Bois as an elitist but not exclusively because of the Talented Tenth proposal, succinctly noted that “scholars have tended to collapse that elitism into . . . the famous ‘Talented Tenth’ concept.” Reed also noted that even those scholars who are among Du Bois’ greatest admirers see the Talented Tenth proposal as elitist but forgive him for it because, they say, he later changed his views and stopped advocating it.4 With few exceptions, the general conclusion is that the theory was designed to protect (or certainly would have the effect of protecting) the status and privileges of elites.5
If, however, we explore the probable origins of Du Bois’ theory and look more closely at what he wrote about the Talented Tenth in that context, it will be possible to come to very different conclusions. In particular, if we consider his foundational study in and commitments to philosophical ideals, his ideal of the Talented Tenth does not look so much like a conservative, elitist theory designed to protect the privileges of a precious few and instead reflects genuine concerns about how to create a better society, perhaps “the good society,” in which the needs, interests, and abilities of all gained respect and support.
Because so much of Du Bois’ postgraduate work is easily identified as history, political economy, and sociology, it has been easy to forget that his academic foundation was in philosophy. But he reminded us in one of his autobiographies that in high school and at Fisk he studied “Latin and Greek, philosophy and some history.”6 Both of his undergraduate degrees (Fisk, 1888; Harvard, 1890) were in philosophy. When he began his graduate studies at Harvard, he turned to “United States history and social problems” not because of a personal desire to abandon philosophy but because his academic adviser, William James, said to him: “‘If you must study philosophy you will; but if you can turn aside into something else, do so. It is hard to earn a living with philosophy.’” And so, Du Bois said, “I turned toward history and social science.” But while at Harvard, Du Bois studied with philosophers including George Herbert Palmer, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, and William James. He also joined, and was an active member of, the Philosophical Club.7 It is likely that no idea promoted by Du Bois is better known than his doctrine of the Talented Tenth. It is equally likely that there is no other idea so clearly linked to his intellectual foundation in philosophy.
Du Bois’ Talented Tenth proposal bears a striking similarity to aspects of Plato’s Republic, which addresses, in part, the structure of an ideal society, including the place of elites in it.8 Plato’s ideal Republic was clearly characterized by a social hierarchy, at the top of which was a highly educated, elite cadre of men whose charge it was to organize society, lead the masses, and do the things we generally think of as in the purview of “the government.” They were the leaders—the Philosopher Kings or Rulers. And because these Rulers would comprise such a small segment of society, it might be difficult to see beyond their exclusiveness. But if we consider how they were to arrive at their positions, the group might not seem quite so exclusive.
The process began in a state-financed educational system. Up to about the age of ten, students pursued a course of study that focused on reading and writing and also included music and gymnastics. For the next several years, the focus was literary and included literature, poetry, and music, along with physical education and probably some mathematics. Music and mathematics were the focus of the next five or so years, after which all students (now about eighteen years old) completed a mandatory two-year gymnastics course designed to prepare them for the military. From there, some students moved on to the higher educational process, lasting about fifteen years and focused on mathematics, science, and dialectics. Mathematics provided the skills necessary for determining the unity behind the other disciplines, and dialectics provided the foundation “for reducing math to logic.” Mastery of math and dialectics enabled students to transcend the limitations of knowledge that were based on experience (senses). Thus, successful students would be able to find the truth themselves. Those who completed this extensive educational program comprised the class of Guardians from which the Rulers (or philosophers) and their Auxiliaries would eventually come. But until that time, people went on with their lives, pursuing fields and interests according to their calling or capacity. After fifteen years or so, those highly educated men, approaching the age of about fifty, presumably would have gained the experience, vision, patience, courage, wisdom—the character—necessary to be among those from whom the Philosopher Rulers, or the leaders, would come. Even though those who would become rulers or leaders would automatically become members of an elite class (and often, in fact, descended from elites), because all free men, theoretically, would have had access to the process that created the pool of people from which those elites eventually came, it would probably be a mistake to view it as a totally closed society. Indeed, Plato warned against pushing people into this leadership group simply because they were well born, and excluding people merely because they were not. Those who would ultimately be selected as rulers would have to be chosen purely on the basis of their ability and their commitments. The potential and actual members of this class simply had to be properly educated, to be talented, to manifest certain abilities and disposition or character, and to be committed to goodness and justice.9
Plato’s “Foundation Myth” provides the most detailed caution against limiting the Rulers to members of elite families. The creation story in The Republic reminds the community:
You are, all of you in this community, brothers. But when god fashioned you, he added gold in the composition of those of you who are qualified to be Rulers; . . . he put silver in the Auxiliaries, and iron and bronze in the farmers and other workers. Now since you are all of the same stock, though your children will commonly resemble their parents, occasionally a silver child will be born of a golden parent, or a golden child of a silver parent, and so on. Therefore the first and most important of god’s commandments to the Rulers is that in the exercise of their function as Guardians their principal care must be to watch the mixture of metals in the characters of their children. If one of their own children has traces of bronze or iron in its make-up, they must harden their hearts, assign it its proper value, and degrade it to the ranks of the industrial and agricultural class where it properly belongs: similarly, if a child of this class is born with gold or silver in its nature, they will promote it appropriately to be a Guardian or an Auxiliary. And this they must do because there is a prophecy that the State will be ruined when it has Guardians of silver or bronze. (PR, §415a–b)
The legacy of hundreds of years of enslavement and a generation of postemancipation segregation and discrimination undoubtedly made it impossible for Du Bois to talk, literally, about “natural abilities,” which the Jim Crow system had deliberately stunted in millions of individuals. Moreover, by the turn of the twentieth century, a variety of misapplications of science to society, particularly Darwinist theories, seemed to substantiate conclusions about black (and immigrant) inferiority in America while justifying the colonization of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. And so when, in The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois addressed the critical question about whether to provide vocational or classical education for black Americans, he used language that was slightly different from that which Plato used. Du Bois wrote:
Teach workers to work—a wise saying; wise when applied to German boys and American girls; wiser when said of Negro boys, for they have less knowledge of working and none to teach them. Teach thinkers to think,—a needed knowledge in a day of loose and careless logic; and they whose lot is gravest must have the carefulest training to think aright. If these things are so, how foolish to ask what is the best education for one or seven or sixty million souls! shall we teach them trades, or train them in liberal arts? Neither and both: teach the workers to work and the thinkers to think; make carpenters of carpenters, and philosophers of philosophers, and fops of fools.
Du Bois’ characterization of carpenters, philosophers, and fools appears to reinforce rigid, hierarchical class structures, but he provided us good reason not to view it that way. He continued: “Nor can we pause here. We are training not isolated men but a living group of men,—nay, a group within a group. And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man.”10
Despite his not using Plato’s characterization of people of gold, silver, bronze, and iron, Du Bois clearly recognized that people had different interests and abilities, that those conditions should help to determine aspects of their future, that people should be supported whichever direction they pursued, and, most important, that the goal of the training related to more than the job the man was being prepared to do but the man being prepared for the job. “And to make men,” Du Bois added,
we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living,—not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the glory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth; by founding the common school on the university, and the industrial school on the common school; and weaving thus a system, not a distortion.
Clearly, as many scholars have noted, Du Bois did not believe that everyone would or should go to college. He wrote: “All men cannot go to college but some men must.” And he did not oppose vocational education. Thus, he noted, “I am an earnest advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys, and for white boys, too.” It was also as important to him as to Washington that people learn to work “steadily and skillfully.” But Du Bois also insisted that the success even of schools such as Hampton and Tuskegee (normal, industrial, and vocational schools) would be in proportion to their employment of college graduates.11
Indeed, what has regularly been lost in discussions of Du Bois’ Talented Tenth is that its most pointed argument for higher education was for teachers—the people whose work was so critical to the creation of a Talented Tenth. He characterized teachers as “the group-leaders of the Negro people—the physicians and clergymen, the trained fathers and mothers, the influential and forceful men about him of all kinds.” The teachers were responsible for disseminating “the culture of the surrounding world” to and through “the graduates of the higher schools.” The college-educated teachers were potential revolutionaries whose primary obligation was to teach “what life means.” Their second obligation was to provide the student with “sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an efficient workman.”12 Du Bois predicted that if “the leaders of thought among Negroes are not trained and educated thinkers,” people would simply become the prey of “a hundred half-trained demagogues . . . and hundreds of vociferous busy-bodies.” And he issued the warning that “either you must help furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership, or you must suffer the evil consequences of a headless misguided rabble.” If the teachers were properly prepared, their former students would become “useful” and helpful to the larger group. The leaders among them, presumably members of the Talented Tenth, would rise and pull the rest up with them. Du Bois added, “this is the history of human progress.” The idea that this hypothetical 10 percent of the population would “uplift” the rest was an extremely lofty idea. But philosophers are, often, idealists. And Du Bois’ proposal of a Talented Tenth was an ideal, not unlike the one proposed in Plato’s Republic.13
In The Republic, those fifteen or so years after the completion of formal schooling were critical to identifying those who might become Rulers or leaders. One can easily conclude from Plato’s discussion that a person who lived life totally for himself would simply never be chosen as a leader. And a person’s desire to become a ruler/leader could eliminate him from the potential candidates. That is, people who wanted to be “in charge” probably lusted after power and might attend only to their personal interests once they had it. People could be eliminated because of their relationship to money. In fact, a person 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. Because it was important for all citizens to live full, meaningful lives, Rulers had to be willing to work to prevent the development of extremes of wealth and poverty among individuals. The primary concern of those who would be Rulers was the creation of a good society, the foundation of which was justice.14
Du Bois’ discussion of the black leadership class was not dramatically different from Plato’s. While Du Bois certainly believed, as he wrote, that “[t]he Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men,” being a college graduate did not automatically put a person in that category. The exceptionally well-educated professionals Du Bois named in his essay, presumably representatives of the Talented Tenth, were known more for the ways they served the public than for the education they had achieved and the occupations they held. But the first individuals he characterized as leaders—the exceptional men and women—were abolitionists, and among them were David Walker, Sojourner Truth, and Frederick Douglass, individuals who had very little or no formal schooling. They were leaders, Talented Tenth examples, because of the way they led their lives—working to save others from slavery, to force the country to live up to its creed that all men were created equal, and, in general, to improve life for all black people. Their status in America during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries precluded their becoming very highly, formally educated. Still, the way they lived their adult lives did not preclude their serving the public good or their being examples of the Talented Tenth.15
When Du Bois returned to the topic in his 1948 address, he attempted to clarify his original proposal, revise it based on mid-twentieth-century circumstances, and restate the importance of the idea. The first thing Du Bois did, however, was to acknowledge the criticism his original proposal had attracted. “It has been said that I had in mind the building of an aristocracy with neglect of the masses,” he wrote. He believed that the popularization of Marxist theories contributed to this criticism, and, given that, he decided, he said, “to re-examine and restate the thesis of the Talented Tenth which I laid down many years ago.” Although scholars view his incorporation of socialist ideas as an indication of his radicalization and his moving away from the Talented Tenth ideal, he was especially emphatic in his support in this second iteration of it (perhaps more than in the original proposal).16
In the 1948 presentation, Du Bois understandably emphasized the changes that had taken place in the world political economy and the emergence of new knowledge, especially in the sciences, since the turn of the century, and, for that reason, he continued to emphasize education. He emphasized, even more than before, the responsibility of the small group of leaders to the larger group. But most important of all, he made especially (perhaps painfully) clear that traditional markers of elite status did not automatically qualify one for membership in the Talented Tenth.
In 1948, Du Bois was contrite about his naiveté in 1903. He pointed out the particulars of “the Negro Problem” (lynching, segregation, disfranchisement) in that earlier moment and said he “saw salvation through intelligent leadership . . . through a Talented Tenth” as the possible solution. He added, “Willingness to work and make personal sacrifice for solving these problems was, of course, the first prerequisite and Sine Qua Non. I did not stress this, I assumed it.” He “assumed that with knowledge, sacrifice would automatically follow,” but he conceded that his youthful idealism had prevented his seeing that “selfishness is even more natural than sacrifice.” He had taken for granted people’s willingness to sacrifice for the greater good because of his training at Fisk, where it was an expectation. By 1948, however, he realized that his original Talented Tenth proposal could “put in control and power a group of selfish self-indulgent, well-to-do men, whose basic interest in solving the Negro problem was personal; [and whose interests were instead in] personal freedom and unhampered enjoyment and use of the world, without any real care or certainly no arousing care as to what became of the mass of American Negroes, or of the mass of any people.” By 1948, Du Bois could see how his original proposal “might result in a sort of interracial free-for-all, with the devil taking the hindmost and the foremost taking anything they could lay hands on.” He added, “This, historically, has always been the danger of aristocracy.” While Plato had warned about the inherent danger of tolerating the development of extremes of wealth and poverty in a society, Du Bois insisted in his 1948 presentation “that the poor need not always be with us, and that all men could and should be free from poverty.” And probably reflecting the changes in the world since 1903 as much as what he actually thought in 1903, Du Bois noted in 1948: “My Talented Tenth must be more than talented and work not simply as individuals. Its passport to leadership was not alone learning but expert knowledge of modern economics as it affected American Negroes; and in addition to this and fundamental would be its willingness to sacrifice and plan for such economic revolution in industry and just distribution of wealth as would make the rise of our group possible.” Du Bois’ (much more detailed) analysis of the changes in the world political economy during the first half of the twentieth century ended on the role of the Talented Tenth in making a difference.
Here comes a new idea of a Talented Tenth: The concept of a group-leadership not simply educated and self-sacrificing but with clear vision of present world conditions and dangers and conducting American Negroes to alliance with culture groups in Europe, America, Asia, and Africa, and looking toward a new world culture. We can do it. We have the ability. The only question is, have we the will?17
Du Bois’ proposal in 1948 included a leadership group of “[o]ne one-hundredth, or thirty thousand persons” in a organization with a paid staff. When he looked around for “an already existing body [that] could be adapted to this work,” the college fraternities (presumably because of their connection to higher learning, their large membership, and their national dispersion) held some potential. But their members were too young (spirited, impulsive) and too preoccupied with making a living to place in this important position. And so he turned to the Boulé, his host, which held both limitations and potential.18
Some of the most significant limitations of the Boulé related to its composition. First, it was so small. Du Bois noted that there were only 440 families represented in the Boulé (not including the Baltimore membership, which had not responded to prior communications), and he calculated this membership as one ten-thousandth of the 3 million black families in America at the time. Second, the Boulé families were so small (more than half had only one child or no children) that Du Bois saw the organization as headed for extinction. The average age of the membership did not help matters, either. “[W]e are old men,” he noted. There was only one member under thirty years old. Three-fourths were between thirty and sixty; most, he believed, nearer to sixty. A quarter of the members were over sixty. To these conditions Du Bois added the lack of diversity among occupations of the members, feelings of helplessness, a live-for-today philosophy, and a lack of belief among them in black ability.19
The expansion of the Boulé membership in age, occupation, and number would not be so difficult to accomplish. Du Bois urged direct recruiting: “Nothing but congenital laziness should keep us from a membership of 3,000 by the next biennium . . . and a membership of 30,000 by 1960.” This number represented one one-hundredth of the black population. As did Plato, Du Bois sought “active virile men of middle age and settled opinions who have finished their education and begun their life work.” He especially wanted these members to realize that their positions derived as much from opportunity as from ability and that, therefore, paramount among their responsibilities was extending these opportunities to others.20
Probably the most important and most neglected aspect of Du Bois’ call for growing a Talented Tenth, now a “Guiding Hundredth,” was his concern that this not become a closed society of any sort. He wrote: “This new membership must not simply be successful in the American sense of being rich: they must not all be physicians and lawyers. The technicians, business men, teachers and social workers admitted must be those who realize the economic revolution now sweeping the world and do not think that private profit is the measure of public welfare.” He especially emphasized “honest men” and “self-sacrificing leadership.” About the latter, he demurred, “this is primarily a question of character which I failed to emphasize in my first proposal of a Talented Tenth.”21
Despite persistent scholarly conclusions that Du Bois’ efforts celebrated and almost blindly advocated for the elite at the expense of the masses, the 1948 speech, in fact, represents Du Bois’ most direct challenge to some who might have seen themselves as the leaders of race. After he explained why the college fraternity members were unsuitable for this work, he said, “I turn then to this fraternity [the Boulé] but with some misgiving” (emphasis added). He explained: “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 went on to describe the Boulé (of which he was a member) as “an old, timid, conservative group” characterized by the “unconscious and dangerous dichotomy” of possessing an “identity with the poor” while “act[ing] and sympathiz[ing] with the rich.” After explaining all his other misgivings about the Boulé, some of which are noted above, he went on to describe the work they had to undertake. He ended his commentary with a profoundly pessimistic prediction 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.22
It is no wonder that Du Bois sat alone on a bench on the college campus after his speech; it must have deeply offended his hosts, many of whom undoubtedly (mistakenly) saw themselves as true representatives of the Talented Tenth.23
Not only did Du Bois’ presentation before the Boulé not assume that the people we might readily identify as elites were (or should be) the leaders of the race, it made profoundly clear that he did not see traditional elites and the Talented Tenth as analogous.24 Indeed, what is so remarkable about the speech is that it clearly slurred the Boulé members as mere elites and, potentially worse, as people protecting their exclusive little club and the lifestyle enclaves that their occupations, incomes, and social networks helped to create.25 Although Du Bois’ “new idea of a Talented Tenth” included people who were well educated and self-sacrificing but with more awareness of and interest in world affairs, he seemed pretty certain that even in the meeting of the Boulé, composed presumably of America’s true black elite, he was planting that seed in fallow ground.
That Du Bois would have made the negative remarks he made is phenomenal, and that Du Bois scholars since then have not recognized their significance is even more remarkable. But also lost to many of us until now is the extreme irony in the fact that the Boulé in ancient Greece was the leadership class, the advisory body during the transition of city-states (Athens, Corinth, Argos, etc.) from government by aristocracy to more democratic-like structures. Du Bois certainly knew this: he referred to the leaders of his hypothetical Guiding Hundredth as “a directing council.” Moreover, the (Sigma Pi Phi) Boulé administrative structure incorporated official titles of the ancient society. Some of the Boulé members were labeled “the Archons,” the actual title of a handful of civil officers who administered and enforced the law in ancient Athens. But finally, despite the obvious shortcomings in, and Du Bois’ misgivings about, the Boulé, he remained convinced that “[t]here is no reason why the sort of thought and teaching which 2,000 years ago made the groves of Athens the center of the world’s salvation, could not live again in ten thousand Negro homes in America today.”26
The characterization of the Talented Tenth theory as elitist and conservative is a consequence of our own narrow assumptions that put people in this group simply because they were well educated, had a “good” job, and/or came from a “good” family. Du Bois’ remarks before and about the Boulé made it clear that its members were not necessarily representatives of the Talented Tenth, and, again, one would not likely find a more elite black collective in America at the time. It is precisely because Du Bois did not conflate leadership with a good education, a lucrative job, and/or a fine pedigree that his proposals were so much more radical than we have recognized. And, further, we should remember that both his 1903 and 1948 presentations sought to lay out a program for developing leadership and, especially in 1948, a plan of work for that leadership class. Leadership would not be an indication of privilege, but evidence of sacrifice (“self-sacrificing leadership”). It would be the responsibility of the leaders to “find desert, ability, and character among young Negroes and get for them education and opportunity.” If the entire program succeeded, “the American Negro . . . will be able to lead the world and will want to do so” (emphasis added).27
Du Bois’ original discussion of the ideal of the Talented Tenth appeared at a time when many people were seeking alternatives to the so-called “Gospel of Wealth,” whose effects Du Bois brilliantly illustrated in The Souls of Black Folk. That gospel had fostered massive capital accumulations, a grossly uneven distribution of wealth, and unhealthy living and working conditions for many, if not most, of the masses. In the late 1870s, Henry George offered one possible alternative in Progress and Poverty, in which he proposed his potentially revolutionary “single tax” on what he considered to be the source (private property) of most of the unearned wealth accumulating in private hands at the time. Ten years later, Edward Bellamy’s utopian novel Looking Backward looked all the way (forward) to the year 2000 in order to suggest what the ideal society, which seemed unobtainable in the 1880s, might ultimately resemble. It was not only a socialist society but one in which the governing structure was another version of the dispassionate talented elite. Equally significant, the nineteenth century saw dozens of utopian communities, especially in the northeastern and midwestern regions of the United States, start up and mostly fizzle out soon thereafter.28
Du Bois’ 1948 speech alluded to some of these proposals. After briefly discussing the new economic organization of the world, he encouraged the division of resources based on “need and not . . . chance, or privilege, or . . . power.” He said that “industry should be controlled by the state, and planned by science and . . . all goods should be owned and distributed in such ways as result in the greatest good to all.” He pointed out that such organization “is called by many names: Socialism, Communism, Liberalism, Consumers-Cooperation, The New Deal, or Progressivism, taking its name according to place and time and emphasis.”29 Viewed alongside these well-known programs and philosophies, even the original Talented Tenth proposal, rather than seeming conservative or elitist, can more easily be seen as one of the most radical of the many proposals for social, political, and/or economic reorganization to have appeared in America by the turn of the twentieth century.
The 1948 speech seemed more radical than the original presentation because of its socialist propositions. But the ideal was radical from its inception. As Thomas Holt writes, examining a larger body of work than under examination here, Du Bois’ “program was not defensive and reactionary, but forward looking and militant”; it was “not a retreat to nationalism, but a recognition of the international dimensions of the racial conflict.” By Du Bois’ formulations, black Americans “could be the vanguard of an international assault on class privilege.” And as Fiona Spiers rightly notes, rather than suggesting “a closed caste,” this Talented Tenth proposal represented “the pinnacle of a meritocracy.” Given how consistently black people were excluded at every turn, a true meritocracy would have been radical indeed.30
Conclusions that Du Bois’ Talented Tenth proposal was a conservative idea are, nevertheless, easy to defend. Again, the original version seems conservative or elitist precisely because of Du Bois’ subsequent, clear socialist references. It also seems conservative and elitist because when Du Bois originally proposed it, the people who appeared to be members—the college educated—comprised such a small and exclusive group. Not even a tenth of 1 percent of the black population at the time had graduated from college.31 The Talented Tenth idea certainly seems conservative because it has become almost impossible to separate it from turn-of-the-century “uplift” rhetoric, which often carried a big, paternalistic footprint, if not outright condescension. Du Bois’ own words in the 1903 paper presented the two ideas in tandem. Again, he wrote, “The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground. This is the history of human progress.”32 We can also point to Du Bois’ early emphasis on higher education as the most important site of production for the Talented Tenth as evidence of his elitism. But, in this examination, the most compelling reason for possibly seeing this theory as conservative rather than radical is that ancient Athens, the home of the hypothetical Philosopher Rulers whom I have proposed as a possible model for Du Bois’ leadership class, was itself a highly hierarchical society—with slaves; and Plato, himself, did not think very much of democratic forms of government. He pretty soundly rejected them.33
If, however, one considers that it was not until 1984 that at least 10 percent of black Americans over the age of twenty-five had completed at least four years of college, the turn-of-the-century proposal for a Talented Tenth can take on more meaning.34 What if at least 10 percent of black Americans had been college trained three generations earlier, around 1900, when Du Bois first proposed the Talented Tenth, and a significant enough portion of that small percentage had been trained for, and was committed to the specific purpose of, working to create a good—just—society? Would it have taken two whole generations more for the eruption of the modern civil rights movement? Would such a movement even have been necessary? These questions are of a sort that historians should never ask, of course, because we cannot answer them. But such questions nevertheless might help us to see the idea of the Talented Tenth differently from the way we are accustomed to seeing it.
If it were possible to see Du Bois’ proposal of a Talented Tenth beyond the contexts in which we normally see it embedded, and particularly as something other than (something bigger and fundamentally more important than) a reaction to Booker T. Washington’s best-selling industrial-education proposals, then Du Bois’ idea of the Talented Tenth might better resemble the kind of radical idea that it actually was. And Du Bois’ move toward Marxism might then reflect his expanding, internationalizing, or in today’s parlance, globalizing, rather than retreating from, his original proposal.35
Du Bois did not back away from any of his 1903 positions in the 1948 presentation. He continued to insist that “[a]ll persons should be educated according to ability and labor according to efficiency,” that people should “work according to gift and training” and receive a decent wage for that work, and that the society would work best when everyone did what they were best suited to and best trained to do.36 As conservative as this all seems in isolation, it was probably more an argument against limiting black folk as a group to menial occupations than an argument for solidifying the higher status of a smaller group among them. But, finally, even if the Talented Tenth/Guiding Hundredth should not be related to Plato’s Philosopher Rulers, we should remember Du Bois’ lifelong insistence on state-financed public education, equal access to it, the best possible training for all individuals, and the availability of a college curriculum to any who had the capacity to and interest in pursuing it. Had that vision been fulfilled, the so-called Talented Tenth/Guiding Hundredth would still have been an elite group, but its origins would have been incredibly broad based. Had the total vision been fulfilled, it would have been the work of the members, rather than their occupations and degrees, which defined them. And, most important, if the theory worked as Du Bois proposed it, not only would black Americans be prepared to, they would want to lead not only the race but the world to that good society about which the philosopher always dreamed. Whether we consider the 1903 or the 1948 proposal, it is difficult to imagine an idea(l) more radical than that.