Du Bois defended the Black elite as servants, not masters, of the masses.

Evidence

We must rid ourselves of the persistent idea that the advance of mankind consists of the scaling off of layers who become incorporated with the world’s upper and ruling classes, leaving always dead and inert below the ignorant and unenlightened mass of men. Our professional classes are not aristocrats and our masters—they are and must be the most efficient of our servants and thinkers whose legitimate reward is the advancement of the great mass of American Negroes and with them the uplift of all men. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 976

Categorization

• XREF: Directly counters Robinson’s critique in the surrounding passage; a primary source worth juxtaposing against the historian’s interpretation.