W. E. B. Du Bois's "Talented Tenth": A Pioneering Conception of Transformational Leadership

In 1903, W. E. B. Du Bois presented a radical leadership proposal…the “Talented Tenth” emphasized the education and training in leadership of ten percent of the African American population…[that] would transform the larger, uneducated segment of the population and lead them to higher levels of social acceptance and independence.

This study…describes the historical factors that led to and influenced Du Bois’s development of [this] strategy, especially his reaction to and criticism of Booker T. Washington’s proposals to accommodate the white power structure through diminished educational and social expectations for African Americans.…

[M]any ideas associated with James Burns’s notion of “transformational leadership” were anticipated by Du Bois’s earlier work…. Evidence…substantiates not only Du Bois’s powerful legacy to African American and general American history, but also shows that the...ideas of the “Talented Tenth” were indeed a pioneering conception of Transformational Leadership.