It Was All a Dream: Shifting Du Boisian Notions in Richard Wesley’s The Talented Tenth

In “Criteria of Negro Art” (1926), W.E.B. Du Bois identifies what he called the “new stirrings” among young Black people of the time—“stirrings of the beginning of a new appreciation of joy, of a new desire to create, of a new will to be, as though in this morning of group life we had awakened from some sleep that at once dimly mourns the past and dreams a splendid future.”¹ Du Bois’s valuation of joy, creativity, consciousness, and futurity echoes the creative vibrancy and urgency happening during the Harlem Renaissance. Believing in the potential of younger generations of Black folk to use Art to establish the humanity and brilliance of the “race,” Du Bois, here, expands his research as a sociologist of African American life and culture to activism. Manning Marable notes that, after publishing The Philadelphia Negro in 1899—a first-of-its-kind sociological study of Black Philadelphians living in the Seventh Ward between 1896 and 1897—Du Bois “was especially convinced that careful sociological measurement, combined with a proper cultural and historical understanding of a social group, could lead to the construction of a social agenda for reform.”²  

In the groundbreaking study, Du Bois determines the need for Black communal “reform” based on his observations of a large section of the population who had limited or no access to decent wages, jobs, food, housing, sanitary living conditions, and education. These bleak outcomes, which directly resulted from American slavery and the failed Reconstruction era, required interventions. In "The Talented Tenth" (1903), Du Bois proposed a solution: encourage the Black middle class to take responsibility for helping lower-class Blacks become upwardly mobile (through hiring Black labor, for example). He believed that a new generation of educated Black elites, a group he called The Talented Tenth, would lead the race to full civil rights. 

Du Bois imagined that 10% of African Americans who excelled academically, socially, economically, and artistically were the chosen ones whose collective intellectual contributions, cultural production, and leadership would function holistically as an armor of resistance to systemic racism in the U.S. Theoretically, the emergence and institutionalization of the “tenth” would help not only those less privileged to become liberated, but it would liberate the entire community. While this call to action was notable for its emphasis on the moral duty and obligation of the middle class, it ignored the alluring benefits and exclusionary politics of capitalism, which reinforced the very class hierarchies that Du Bois identified as obstacles to racial uplift in his early studies. As Marable writes, “The Talented Tenth theory was a strategy to win democracy for all Black Americans. The burden of struggle resided upon those of the race best prepared, educationally and economically, to lead that fight.”³ The problem with this theory is that while the “burden” seems a light load to carry for those with class privilege, for racialized people the load is still quite heavy regardless of class, and the weight can breed self-righteousness, self-loathing, and resentment that only deepens intraracial divisions. 

The African American class conundrum is one that generations of playwrights have explored at length in the theatre,⁴ including Richard Wesley, who, having studied under Owen Dodson at Howard University, began his professional career at New Lafayette Theatre in the early 1970s under the mentorship of Ed Bullins. A number of Wesley’s plays, including The Mighty Gents (1978) and The Talented Tenth (1989), document the promise and disillusionment of Black American dreams—not only because of White racism but, more remarkably, because of intraracial class breakdowns. His works magnify the elusive pleasures and lingering anxieties and regret often associated with performances of superiority and dominance. The Talented Tenth recognizes, as Du Bois himself eventually did, the inherent classist assumptions and practical limitations of Black elitism. In this essay, I am concerned with Du Bois’s shift from the individualized theory of the “tenth” to an institutional conceptualization of “Negro Art”.⁵ Reading Wesley’s The Talented Tenth, set in the 1990s, I explore the playwright’s use of dreams and memories as reflections of and responses to Du Bois’s shifting ideas about what constitutes Black advocacy, activism, and excellence.⁶

In The Talented Tenth, the curtain rises on a beach in Negril, Jamaica. Bernard, a man in his forties, stands off to the side as his wife, Pam, and their three friends, Marvin, Ron, and Rowena—all of whom are former Howard University classmates—relax in the sun. Bernard is daydreaming about his first job interview with Mr. Griggs, who is in his fifties and the owner of a radio station. The daydream, which is shown onstage, takes place in the 1960s. The dialogue begins easily, with the two connecting over a mutual acquaintance, before quickly shifting into more direct speech (similar to a grilling rather than an interview). Their exchange, thereafter, exemplifies the kind of miscommunication that can occur between those of differing generations; it also captures the tension of the nationwide racial and political upheaval of that turbulent time. Griggs—a World War II veteran-turned-businessman—has achieved success through hard work, whereas Bernard has only recently graduated from Howard and is at the start of his career in business. While Bernard aspires to Griggs’ level of success, the older man is grumpy and condescending with a temperament that suggests that whether or not the young man gets the job, achieving and maintaining a spot in the mythical “tenth” will not (and should not, according to Griggs) be easy.  

Griggs holds the keys to the metaphorical gate between Bernard and his first job, but it is important to note that, although respectful, Bernard is not docile (a fact that leads him and Griggs to disagree on the direction of the radio station in the years that follow). Bernard has an activist past, including participating in protests as a college student and embracing a pan-Africanist worldview, which was strengthened by his relationship with his then-girlfriend, Habiba. After graduation, the general expectation was for him to secure a “good” job and put his radicalism aside for the betterment of the race. By doing this, he sacrifices his dream for Du Bois’s dream, which, as Zachary R. Williams summarizes it, was for “college-educated blacks to become race men and women [and] lead the race to social equality.”⁷  

Bernard represents a new wave of young, educated Black people invested in individualism and capitalism.⁸ To Griggs’ annoyance, the young man has his sights set on the fruits of his labor (i.e., “[making] lots of money” and spending it) rather than the labor necessary to make money that would serve the needs of the company and, proximally, the needs of the race. To Griggs, young people of Bernard’s generation have a “duty” and “responsibility” to suffer and struggle for the next generations, just as he has. He instructs: 

Griggs articulates a logic and ethic not uncommon among his generation, for whom lifetimes of sacrifice have resulted in more freedoms for their children than they were afforded. This strategy is reminiscent of Robin D. G. Kelley’s “freedom dreaming,”¹⁰ which is, essentially, imagining liberty and justice through a love for the collective that exists beyond the boundaries of what is possible realistically and politically.  

The discourse on Black freedom through acts of dreaming and speculation is not new in Black Studies, but scholars such as Jayna Brown, reading Frantz Fanon, have discussed such acts in the context of utopia. Brown defines Black utopia as “the moments when those of us untethered from the hope of rights, recognition, or redress here on earth celebrate ourselves as elements in a cosmic effluvium.”¹¹ Embracing the present as a radical temporality, Brown writes, “In fact, I don’t think utopia needs hope at all. Hope yearns for a future. Instead, we dream in place, in situ, in medias res, in layers, in dimensional frequencies.”¹² It is within a dimensional frequency that nods toward the future but is situated in a past adjacent to the present that opposing Black male-centered utopic ideologies touch discursively in Bernard’s paradisaic dreamscape. Bernard and Griggs both have dreams rooted in economic success; however, Griggs’ dream is Blacker than it is green. Economics, for him, is a way to amass power that will inevitably advance Black people.  

Griggs is doggedly focused on racial uplift through ownership rather than what he reads as Bernard’s pursuit of economic gain for selfish reasons. This is a subtle yet important nuance: the men are similar, yet their generational positionalities leave them dreaming slightly different dreams, imagining slightly different realities, and pursuing those realities in slightly different ways. It is from this marginal difference that Griggs harshly scrutinizes Bernard. The tail end of the scene reveals Griggs’ paternalistic posturing for what it is: a performance meant to arouse obedience. The end of the scene is a reflective imagining, an annotation of sorts, in which Bernard tells Griggs that his words that day “frightened [him].” Griggs replies simply, “I know.” Then, Bernard admits, “I’ve been frightened ever since.”¹³ The surrealism of this moment allows the two men to be honest, even vulnerable, with one another without being intimate or even present together. It is no coincidence that Bernard’s fear and Griggs’ intent are made evident in a daydream; it is a calmer frequency in which to tell the truth. Further, neither of them discusses affect or emotions in the realistic scenes between them that follow. Instead, those scenes are mostly centered on business discussions related to the radio station. As the scene shifts back to Bernard’s contemporary reality with his wife and friends on the beach, it is clear that he is at a crossroads directly shaped by his race, age, class, and gender.    

That first interview lingers in Bernard’s mind, and it is interesting that at a time and place when he should be relaxing and enjoying his money and leisure time, the memory of it haunts him. Bernard yearns for something missing or lost in his life—something reflective of the downside of assuming a class positionality “above” rather than “alongside” one’s people. Of the Bernards of the world who “now found themselves in their forties and successfully integrated into the American dream,” Wesley observes the material reality—the “spacious homes, the requisite expensive cars, overseas vacations, excellent pension packages, and political connections”¹⁴—that still leave them desiring something they relinquished to acquire the people, places, and things that keep them occupied, sedated, and blind to the needs of the collective. 

Wesley’s dramatic inquiry into what happened to the young activists of the 60s who shifted their talents in an alternative direction exposes a Talented Tenth whose roots in Black working-class communities were at best leggy. Reflecting on Du Bois’s idealistic dream of the “tenth” and his subsequent shift away from it, Wesley writes, “Realizing almost immediately how elitist this idea appeared, Du Bois abandoned it and never sought to promote it.”¹⁵ This is a truth that, according to Joy James in Transcending the Talented Tenth (2013), is often underacknowledged. “Race memory,” James writes, “misleads as it fails to recall that the greatest promoter of black elite agency became, in time, its most severe critic.”¹⁶ After the opening daydream ends, Wesley depicts this Du Boisian course correction through a sequence of stressful encounters that lead Bernard to a crisis point in his personal and professional lives. 

Bernard’s life has been an experiment in intraracial “double consciousness” which has manifested as class and color trouble. Understanding the complexities of double consciousness within the race, Wesley explores colorism in the love triangle between Bernard’s light-skinned wife, Pam, his dark-skinned former girlfriend, Habiba, and his dark-skinned mistress, Tanya.¹⁷ Habiba is a memory that never materializes, yet she is very present. She represents a missed opportunity for Bernard to pursue a life and career path rooted in Black liberation and Black cultural practices of love and activism. He idealizes Habiba, lamenting what could have been had they not split up. Despite this, he applies principles of the Black Power Movement to his work at the radio station to positive effect. As Griggs’ partner, he does not have the power to make major decisions about the company’s direction, but he anticipates that his hard work over the years will lead Griggs to give him ownership of the company.  

 Although it is never explicitly stated, ownership, to Bernard, is the consolation prize for carrying future generations on his shoulders. Griggs, however, intends to sell the company to a communications conglomerate called Pegasus International—a move which sparks frustration and resentment. Bernard believes this conglomerate will take advantage of his programming work in centering Black voices and music, which has, to this point, grown the station’s listenership. Although he has the option to continue as an employee, the buyout will likely disrupt the radio station's “controversial” aesthetic and other political elements that make it culturally Black. On top of this betrayal, his marriage to Pam and extramarital relationship with Tanya are crumbling under the weight of his ambition, apathy, and self-centeredness.  

Wesley’s play is Du Bois’s Talented Tenth theory in practice, and Bernard’s life is the foremost case study. The women in the play, especially Tanya and Pam, play supporting roles, representing Bernard’s desire and ambition. Wesley, highlighting their importance, gives them space to speak in monologues inserted between scenes or self-reflective moments within scenes; this is the only way their voices and perspectives are relayed without Bernard as their filter. When they speak, it becomes clear that they are successful, intelligent women defined by their proximity to a man and his dreams. Tanya, a journalist who graduated from Spelman College and Columbia University, grew up in a working-class family. While she fills the ever-present void of Habiba (in complexion only), it is clear by her incessant requests for Bernard to leave his wife that she is the anti-Habiba—she does not have the strength to leave him although she communicates a multitude of reasons why she should. Reading like Savannah in Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale, she considers herself to be a “woman of substance” rather than a “popular” woman (like Pam), which leads me to determine that Tanya is not fighting for Bernard, she is fighting against Pam—a placeholder for light-skinned women—who, in Tanya’s experience, have not had to be of substance to get the guy of their dreams. Patience, she believes, is the attribute that will make her the victor, overall; however, she does not factor in the other “other woman”—Habiba—as a potential obstacle. Pam, however, is well aware that Habiba (the memory of her) is both of their competition.  

Pam and Bernard’s marriage has always been more about optics than love. From a colorist perspective, she was the more pragmatic choice for a wife instead of a dark-skinned woman like Habiba or Tanya—a fact that Bernard never denies (because he cannot). Aesthetically, Pam exists in harmony with the quintessential picture of the African American family that he was sold; that is, the elitist imagining of Du Bois’s notion. In a conversation with Tanya, who is pressuring Bernard to decide between her and Pam, he reveals that his achievements—running a radio station, heading a household, being respected by his cadre of middle-class friends, and even having a loving girlfriend outside of his marriage—are unfulfilling. He admits, “Now, it’s all these years later and I’m scared and I’m angry because I want to change my life and do some things I’ve never had a chance to do. But, if I do I could hurt my wife and my children and everyone who depends on me, so I stay where I am and I dream. But I don’t dare act.”¹⁸ Standing and dreaming alone while afraid is where we find Bernard at the beginning of the play and, although he appears in control, he remains in that state psychologically and emotionally.  

In this embodiment, he appears stuck in stillness on the sidelines as life moves around him; however, he has options. He can remain still or move forward, but he seems to be waiting for the right decision to occur to him or for someone else to make it for him. What is clear is that he is tired of gauging his choices by society’s metric. While Tanya’s concern is whether he loves her more than Pam, Bernard is on the precipice of making choices in his business and personal lives that put the security and respectability of those he is responsible for, even Tanya, at risk. As “talented” as he is, he is too human and too fallible to live up to unattainable standards. Thus, he stands and he dreams, evaluating his past in the present. The best decision eventually occurs to him. In fact, he divorces his wife and ends his relationship with Tanya. Some weight is lifted off of his shoulders, and he acts on his dreams by devising a plan to buy the radio station. 

In the final scene, parroting his interview with Griggs, Bernard interviews a “young man”—his son—“the seventh generation since slavery”—for a position at the station. The scene is similar to the first but, instead of completely reproducing the toxic dynamics between his younger self and Griggs, Bernard infuses hope in the conversation. Nearly verbatim, he repeats Griggs’ diatribe about generations, history, passivity, race, and struggle. As was his experience, the content of this monologue “scares” the young man. Then, Bernard follows up with a directive to dampen his son’s fear and help him take actionable steps forward—“Well, don’t be scared, young blood. Just be ready.”¹⁹ This resolution is a full circle moment in which Bernard is now the empowered mentor; however, instead of playing Griggs’ role, he has taken the useful lessons he learned from him and adjusted them slightly, leaving room for a new generation to move. The Talented Tenth demonstrates how the theory that inspired it is handicapped by elitism and a lack of attention to the nuances of the intraracial politics that sometimes complicate Black American dreams.  

 Be that as it may, a debt of gratitude is owed to W.E.B. Du Bois, the foremost Black intellectual of the twentieth century, for proposing an idea that has become a catalyst in dramatic narratives dating as far back as Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog (1938), Abram Hill's On Strivers Row (1939), and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959). It is difficult to imagine what the substance of Black Theatre would be without Du Bois’s polarizing concept. The Talented Tenth and contemporary plays that painstakingly scrutinize the inner workings and interpersonal impact of class on Black individuals and communities make clear that the discourse is as significant now as it was when Du Bois was most prolific. The Talented Tenth, as I read it, is more dream than theory. The century-old quandary of how best to cultivate and employ Black talent to elevate Black people is always already followed by unending ellipses that those of us within the collective, however privileged, must interpret and redefine as we progress between points along the margins of a surreal society…to the center…and back…