UC Exhibit: A Shaman's Doorway and the Talented Tenth

Published on 27 May 2024 at 11:56

The Talented Tenth and the San Francisco Fillmore

Whatever became of The Talented Tenth?

“The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men,” wrote Du Bois, a graduate of both Fisk University and Harvard University. “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.”

 

In A Shaman’s Doorway, I present my maternal grandparents story of what happened when they took Du Bois’s challenge. The Tenth wasn’t only a motivational concept. It physically impacted the lives of the natives in the backwoods.

Perhaps you already have it, but I am still waiting to see a report from the families the Talented Tenth inspired. Where is the ethnographic, oral, and family history of the Tenth? Online, there is ample discussion on the Tenth, its meaning in the struggle, and its impact on Black attendance at universities. But how did the insertion of educated Black men and women into backwater communities play out? To give voice to the silence that appears to be at play, provide your comments.

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