The Talented Tenth is a concept introduced by African American leader and intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois in the late 19th and early 20th century. It refers to a group of educated and skilled African Americans who he believed should lead the race and work to uplift the rest of the community.
Du Bois believed that only a small percentage of African Americans had the potential to become leaders, and that this group should receive the best education possible in order to develop their talents and use them for the betterment of the entire race. He argued that this "talented tenth" would be able to use their education and skills to fight for civil rights and equality, and to provide leadership and guidance to the African American community as a whole.
This was in strong and blatant opposition to Booker T Washington's notion to build the African American community from the bottom up. He believed those that wereskilled laborers were just as important if not more than those that 'wrote poems'. He wrote: we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful.”
