Du Bois’s Talented Tenth doctrine derived from Crummell and the Negro Academy.

Evidence

In the earliest phase of his career, under the direct influence of Crummell, the Academy, and the omnipresent organizational politics of Booker T. Washington, Du Bois had found the notion of an elite, a Talented Tenth, appealing: … The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. 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. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 897

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that Du Bois’s elitism was inherited from Crummell rather than original raises the question of how far the Talented Tenth strand ran back through black nationalism.