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Black Intellectuals

A review of Black history and culture will reveal any number of African American intellectuals on the Black sociocultural and political landscape: literary intellectuals, political intellectuals, economic intellectuals, “organic” intellectuals, worker's intellectuals, community intellectuals, and others. Central to their thinking is a devotion to ideas and the dissemination of such ideas, in the form of the written word, the lecture, or works of art. There have been considerable differences, however, over what role the intellectual should play in the larger African American community. This entry presents a brief history of that discussion.

Du Bois Sets a Standard

W. E. B. Du Bois once noted that the existence of a Black middle class in the United States represented a double paradox: a “paradox within a paradox.” One might then view the idea of a Black intellectual class as such a paradox, as over time it has been far easier to obtain middle-class status than to become an intellectual.

Du Bois had observed the existence of a small, educated, and reflective class during his undergraduate years at Fisk University, in Tennessee; at Harvard; and for 2 years during his studies at the University of Berlin. He returned to Harvard, completed his doctoral dissertation, accepted his first teaching position at Wilberforce University, and prepared himself to engage in the battle of ideas surrounding the role and status of Blacks in the United States.

Du Bois's first major address on race and the role of intellectuals, those whom he had labeled the “Talented Tenth,” was the first position paper presented before the newly formed Negro American Academy. In it, Du Bois enumerated the problems confronting Black Americans and the role of the academy and its educated cadre in addressing such problems. Black intellectuals, according to Du Bois, were to be the creators of ideas and the shapers of the values necessary in what he believed would constitute the emergence of revolutionary ideas in the making of a “New Black” and “New White” America.

Commitment to the Masses

Essentially, Du Bois envisioned a powerful class of educated Blacks, almost Leninist in their convictions and ideological commitment, which would do for the masses of the newly emancipated Blacks what they, lacking education, skills, and cultural insights, could not do themselves. Booker T. Washington and other critics of Du Bois's intellectual strategy contended that Blacks were not interested in replacing a White elite with a Black elite, but Du Bois asserted that it was not simply a matter of being an elite. What was expected of the Talented Tenth was a life dedicated to the cause of freedom and a willingness to forgo some of the ordinary pleasures of life in order to liberate Blacks from racial and class bondage.

Like Marx before him and Lenin after him, Du Bois also believed that an educated class should play a crucial role in initiating and assisting in the consciousness-raising process among the general population. Marx and Lenin focused on class consciousness, whereas Du Bois focused on both race and class. Du Bois thought nationalism would be a central theme in the class and racial struggle, and thus it was important for leaders to be well-versed in European and American “high culture,” as well as being grounded in and having an appreciation for Black history and culture. This was mandated because this intellectual elite class would be responsible for interacting with both groups.

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