Essay

From The Talented Tenth W.E.B. DuBois 1903

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. Now the training of men is a

difficult and intricate task. Its technique is a matter for

educational experts, but its object is for the vision of seers. If

we make money the object of man-training, we shall develop

money-makers but not necessarily men; if we make technical

skill the object of education, we may possess artisans but not,

in nature, men. 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. On this foundation 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…The Talented Tenth rises and pulls

all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground… How

then shall the leaders of a struggling people be trained and the

hands of the risen few strengthened? There can be but one

answer: The best and most capable of their youth must be

schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. We will

not quarrel as to just what the university of the Negro should

teach or how it should teach it — I willingly admit that each

soul and each race-soul needs its own peculiar curriculum. But

this is true: A university is a human invention for the

transmission of knowledge and culture from generation to

generation, through the training of quick minds and pure

hearts, and for this work no other human invention will suffice,

not even trade and industrial schools… …Do you think that if

the leaders of thought among Negroes are not trained and

educated thinkers, that they will have no leaders? On the

contrary a hundred half-trained demagogues will still hold the

places they so largely occupy now, and hundreds of vociferous

busy-bodies will multiply. You have no choice; 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… I am an earnest

advocate of manual training and trade teaching for black boys,

and for white boys, too. I believe that next to the founding of

Negro colleges the most valuable addition to Negro education

since the war, has been industrial training for black boys.

Nevertheless, I insist that the object of all true education is not

to make men carpenters, it is to make carpenters men; there

are two means of making the carpenter a man, each equally

important: the first is to give the group and community in

which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach

him and his family what life means; the second is to give him

sufficient intelligence and technical skill to make him an

efficient workman; the first object demands the Negro college

and college-bred men — not a quantity of such colleges, but a

few of excellent quality; not too many college-bred men, but

enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the

Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a

good system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently

located and properly equipped… from The Talented Tenth

W.E.B. DuBois 1903 The truth of this has been strikingly shown

in the marked improvement of white teachers in the South.

Twenty years ago the rank and file of white public school

teachers were not as good as the Negro teachers. But they, by

scholarships and good salaries, have been encouraged to

thorough normal and collegiate preparation, while the Negro

teachers have been discouraged by starvation wages and the

idea that any training will do for a black teacher. If carpenters

are needed it is well and good to train men as carpenters. But

to train men as carpenters, and then set them to teaching is

wasteful and criminal; and to train men as teachers and then

refuse them living wages, unless they become carpenters, is

rank nonsense…. Men of America, the problem is plain before

you. Here is a race transplanted through the criminal

foolishness of your fathers. Whether you like it or not the

millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift

them up, they will pull you down. Education and work are the

levers to uplift a people. Work alone will not do it unless

inspired by the right ideals and guided by intelligence.

Education must not simply teach work — it must teach Life. The

Talented Tenth of the Negro race must be made leaders of

thought and missionaries of culture among their people. No

others can do this work and Negro colleges must train men for

it. The Negro race, like all other races, is going to be saved by its

exceptional men.