Transcending the Talented Tenth

In Transcending the Talented Tenth, Joy James provocatively examines African American intellectual responses to racism and the role of elitism, sexism and anti-radicalism in black leadership politics throughout history. She begins with Du Bois' construction of "the Talented Tenth" as an elite leadership of race managers and takes us through the lives and work of radical women in the anti-lynching crusades, the civil rights and black liberation movements, as well as explores the contemporary struggles among black elites in academe.

Joy James teaches in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She coedited Spirit, Space and Survival (Routledge, 1993) which won the Gustav Myers Human Rights Award; and is author of Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race (University of Minnesota, 1996).