William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was the foremost Black thinker in the US in the early 1900s. He is famous for writing “The Souls of Black Folk” (1903) and helping to found the NAACP. He was the editor of its magazine, The Crisis, from 1910 to 1934. Born three years after slavery, he died the night before the March on Washington.
In the early 1900s, the three main Black leaders in the US were, in order of appearance:
- Booker T. Washington (Tuskegee Institute): education, boostraps, respectability politics
- W.E.B. Du Bois (NAACP): civil rights, winning court cases, integration.
- Marcus Garvey (UNIA): Black nationalism, Black unity, Black pride, Black businesses, Back to Africa.
Du Bois thought Marcus Garvey was a dangerous nut. President Coolidge sent Du Bois to Liberia, apparently to undermine Garvey’s attempt to settle Black Americans there and cause trouble.
Du Bois thought Booker T. Washington’s ideas of Black self-help would come to little without political rights to protect any gains. Later race riots, like Tulsa, seemed to prove him right.
But Du Bois’s Black Liberal approach did not take off till Martin Luther King Jr added civil disobedience to it in the 1950s.
The Talented Tenth was Du Bois’s idea that if a tenth of Blacks got a university degree, that would be enough to uplift the race. Carter G. Woodson said education was too Eurocentric for that to work.
“The Souls of Black Folk” (1903) is the book that made his name. It explains Black people to White people, making him the foremost Negro whisperer of his day, like Frederick Douglass before him and James Baldwin after him.
Famous quote:
“this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”
Education: Du Bois studied at Fisk and then became the first Black American to get a PhD from Harvard. He did ground-breaking work in Black sociology – but then found he could not remain on the sidelines as an objective scientist.
Activism: He helped to form the Niagara Movement, which did not depend on White people. Then he helped to found the NAACP, which did. At its first board meeting he was the only Black person in the room. They parted ways in 1934.
Later years: Du Bois became a Pan-Africanist and a communist. Both positions fell out of favour in the US, and its Black mainstream, in the late 1940s: they went against US foreign policy. In 1952 the US government took away his passport. When he got it back in 1958, at age 90, he left and told African countries that the US was not their friend – as Patrice Lumumba would soon find out. Du Bois moved to Ghana and was buried there as a citizen.
– Abagond, 2018.
See also:
- Du Bois
- Niagara Movement
- NAACP
- Marcus Garvey
- Booker T. Washington
- Carter G. Woodson
- Frederick Douglass
- James Baldwin
- Black communists
- Black Liberals
- Du Bois was right:
- March on Washington
555
What would be the appropriate comparison for the 2010s?
Obama v. Cornel West v. Ta-Nehisi Coates ?
Obama is like Booker T. Washington.
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I think given the time setting of DuBois, Garvey’s ideas were just too definitive given the rise of the Second Klan which occupied everything including the government of the United States. I can see that DuBois was trying to tone down a very vulnerable social human rights era…
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@abagond and you want to leave for brasil!
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Carter G. Woodson was right.
Many Black people in the early 20th century bought into W.E.B. DuBois’ “Talented Tenth”. They hoped a highly educated top ten percent of Black achievers could create Black institutions and businesses that would uplift the remaining ninety percent of Black folk. In theory, they would provide the brainpower and drive to lead the Black community into reaching its full potential.
In reality, the Talented Tenth moved away from Black communities and never looked back. They convinced themselves that being role models to the masses of Black people was sufficient contribution. Their individual careers and personal power centers took center stage in their lives. They never started the Black-owned businesses nor did the institution building needed for Black America to advance from the bottom of the heap in US society.
One example of the Talented Tenth gone awry is the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC). Many Black Congressfolk have held their seats for decades—and done less and less for the Black people they represent as the years progressed.
In the 1970s and 1980s, they were known as the “Conscience of the Congress” because they worked to pass laws that reflected the desires of their districts. In addition, the CBC often took principled stands against unjust laws and policies. Now many Black people deride the CBC as “The Black Misleadership Class”. They are just as bought off and corrupt as their White counterparts in the Congress, with devastating effects For Black Americans.
I guess you have to be careful what you wish for….
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“Du Bois thought Marcus Garvey was a dangerous nut. President Coolidge sent Du Bois to Liberia, apparently to undermine Garvey’s attempt to settle Black Americans there and cause trouble.”
The old divide and conquer tactic! When will we learn as a people to be trepidatious of any Kneegro that has his black hands in the white man’s pockets while speaking as if he has the interest of all Black folk within the center of his heart??
“The Talented Tenth was Du Bois’ idea that if a tenth of Blacks got a university degree, that would be enough to uplift the race. Carter G. Woodson said education was too Eurocentric for that to work.”
Du Bois’ Talented Tenth is what spawned or what people commonly refer to these days as the “Black Boule. Essentially, this is an off shoot of the white man’s “Skull and Bones”, except in black face.
There are no surprises here folk. Time and time again at junctures throughout history, SOME Kneegroes have always participated in their own destruction as a people because they believe that all with a Black is automatically their friend. (smh)
“All My Skinfolk Ain’t Kinfolk” – Zora Neale Hurtson
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