The Talented Tenth

W. E. B. Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Educated at Fisk University in Nashville and Harvard University, he was a leading African American intellectual from the latter 19th century until his death. While a professor at Atlanta University, he published a series of monographs on African American social life, including The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). His 1903 Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is considered an American literary classic and is partly an attack on Booker T. Washington’s more accommodationist views regarding Black advancement. Du Bois helped found the Niagara Movement, which advocated for the end of discrimination of any kind. The organization was the forerunner of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Peoples (NAACP), which Du Bois helped found in 1909. Du Bois served as the NAACP’s director of research and edited The Crisis, the organization’s journal. In the first half of the 20th century, Du Bois was the most influential voice of African American protest. In 1934 he resigned as editor of The Crisis, dissatisfied with what he saw as the organization’s increasing bourgeois leanings. Indicted as an unregistered foreign agent in 1951 (though not convicted), he became increasingly disenchanted with the United States.