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Talented Tenth

The Talented Tenth is a term used to describe the vanguard—that is, the best and brightest—of the African American community. An admittedly elitist concept, the Talented Tenth was originally conceived as a class of educated and principled Black men who would emerge as leaders of the disadvantaged “Negro” community. Although the term was coined in 1896 by the White liberal Rev. Henry Lyman Morehouse (1834–1917, after whom Morehouse College was named), W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) first gave this idea prominence.

Though Du Bois was its primary architect in theory, Alain Locke (1886–1954) was arguably its most successful promoter in practice. The Harlem Renaissance (1919–1934)—with Locke as the real genius behind it—was a cultural movement made of the literary and artistic vanguard of the Talented Tenth. Related to Du Bois's concept of the Talented Tenth (“the Best”) is its polar opposite, the “submerged tenth” (“the Worst”), and, at the other end of the spectrum, Du Bois's later concept of the “Guiding Hundredth” (what one might characterize as the Talented Tenth among the Talented Tenth). This entry compares Du Bois's and Locke's conceptions of the Talented Tenth.

W. E. B. Du Bois's Vision of the Talented Tenth

In his 1903 manifesto, “The Talented Tenth,” Du Bois propounded a theory that was simple yet profound: Raise up the most gifted African Americans, and they will advance the interests of all Black Americans. Du Bois wrote that African Americans had to be saved by the “exceptional men” among them. Du Bois viewed “the Talented Tenth” as the missionaries of culture among Black people, a role reserved for them, not for Whites or others.

Forty-five years later, when he felt that the race had not been saved as he had hoped it would, Du Bois refined his theory. In August 1948, Du Bois delivered his famous Wilberforce University speech, “The Talented Tenth Memorial Address,” to an audience of eminent African Americans—themselves the epitome of the Talented Tenth. Du Bois proclaimed, true to his Marxist vision at the time, that these leaders must not work as individuals but be willing to make sacrifices and actually plan for an economic revolution in industry that would lead to a redistribution of wealth. Elaborating his notion of the Talented Tenth, Du Bois then spoke of the “Guiding Hundredth”

The “Guiding Hundredth,” as Du Bois envisioned it, would function as a leadership group of inspired individuals. Its members would form alliances (Whites included) on all continents to bring about “a New World culture.” Du Bois's new doctrine effectively democratizes and internationalizes his original strategy for racial advancement by giving it global horizons beyond Black Nationalism. As the maturation of his original theory of the “Talented Tenth,” the “Guiding Hundredth” is numerically narrower, yet strategically broader.

Du Bois's original vision was born of his own experience. After meditating profoundly on the plight of his people—lynching, disenfranchisement, and segregation—Du Bois saw salvation through intelligent leadership through a Talented Tenth. At the other end of the social spectrum, however, he saw “the submerged tenth”—a term Du Bois defines in The Philadelphia Negro as an underclass of the criminals, prostitutes, and the lazy.

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