him with anger
and hostility. He returned north to pursue his graduate education at
Harvard University, and he also spent some time at the University of
Berlin exploring the new field of sociology.

DuBois's first-class education as well as his own scholarly bent led him
to put considerable faith in reason and learning as the tools with which
to rebuild the world. He came to believe that bigotry and discrimination
were rooted in ignorance and that scholarship could destroy them by
exposing them to the light of truth. He strove to demonstrate that the
Afro-American was not innately inferior and that his inferior status
sprang from his unequal and unfair treatment in America.

While at Harvard, he wrote "The Suppression of the African Slave Trade"
which was of such high quality that it became the first volume in an
important historical series published by Harvard. Soon afterwards, while
teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, he conducted extensive
sociological research which resulted in "The Philadelphia Negro". This
pioneering sociological work was valuable for the understanding of the
Negro in Philadelphia and throughout the North, At that time sociology
was a new field, and there was not a single institution of higher
learning in the United States or the world which had adopted it as the
tool for studying the problems of minority groups. Atlanta University
invited DuBois to come there and teach and to conduct sociological
studies. There he began a research department which was devoted to
studying the problems of the Afro-American community and which resulted
in the production of a dozen works.

Besides his interest in scholarly research, DuBois developed a theory of
racial leadership. For a people to advance, he believed, they needed
leaders. If they failed to develop such people of their own, they would
be guided by others. DuBois was doubtful whether his people should
entrust themselves to white leaders. He agreed with Washington that the
masses would have to make their living with their hands, and he also
believed that it was important for them to develop skills which would
help them. While wanting to assist the masses, however, he argued that
the important priority, at the beginning, must be given to training a
leadership elite which he called "the talented tenth." "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 d