e effectiveness of a biracial organization to achieve
significant change. In an article which he wrote in Crisis before
resigning from the N.A.A.C.P., he suggested that black separatism or
black unity could provide a more solid front with which to attack
discrimination and segregation than cooperation with white society. His
goal, he insisted, was still to make ten million of his people free. He
wanted to help them break the bondage of economic oppression, to shake
off the chains of ignorance, to gain their full political rights, and to
become exempt from the insults of discrimination and segregation.

This kind of freedom, he maintained, was not inconsistent with
self-organization for self-advancement. He wanted to see the
Afro-American community develop control over its own churches, schools,
social clubs, and businesses. This was not, DuBois insisted, a surrender
to segregation. He believed that a community which controlled its own
basic institutions was in a better position to make its own decisions and
work for its own advancement. This solidarity and cooperation was
necessary to achieve significant change resulting in an integrated
society. Indirectly, he admitted that this was a shift away from his
concept of "the talented tenth." The assumption that an educated and
cultured elite would be accepted within white society had proved to be
erroneous. To the contrary, he noted, whites often feared educated blacks
as much or more than uneducated ones. "The talented tenth" had not even
gained token acceptance. Therefore DuBois shifted to a concept of a group
solidarity instead of an elite leadership. This concept of group
cooperation must not be confused with that of Washington. DuBois's type
of solidarity was to be the platform from which to assert one's manhood
even if it meant personal deprivation:

"Surely then, in this period of frustration and disappointment, we must
turn from negation to affirmation, from the ever-lasting 'No' to the
ever-lasting 'Yes.' Instead of sitting, sapped of all initiative and
independence; instead of drowning our originality in imitation of
mediocre white folks; instead of being afraid of ourselves and
cultivating the art of skulking to escape the Color Line; we have got to
renounce a program that always involves humiliating self-stultifying
scrambling to crawl somewhere where we are not wanted; where we crouch
panting like a whipped dog. We have got to stop this and learn that on
such