In 1895, Du Bois became the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. The following year, he enrolled as a doctoral student at one of Berlin’s oldest universities, Friedrich-Wilhelms University, which is now called Humboldt University. He was given an honorary doctoral degree from Humboldt in 1958.
He introduced the concept of the “talented tenth” in an essay published in September 1903. The talented tenth were considered Black elites who had the responsibility and duty to better the lives of less fortunate African-Americans.
