Her rejection created a sense of isolation that in many ways remained with him throughout his life. It also inspired an intellectual competitiveness that brought him recognition in the community.
Residents of the town raised money for a scholarship that enabled him to attend Fisk College (now Fisk University), in Nashville, Tennessee. Though his personal preference was to attend Harvard, he lacked adequate financial resources. Fisk had been established in 1866 as a school for recently freed Southern blacks based on the model of New England institutions. Its purpose, like that of similar black schools, was to produce an educated black middle class, what Du Bois describes in the fourth chapter of Dusk of Dawn, "Science and Empire," as the "Talented Tenth." One function of this elite was to provide moral and intellectual leadership for blacks.
After receiving his A.B. degree from Fisk College in 1888, Du Bois was admitted to Harvard as a junior. He studied philosophy with pragmatist philosophers William James, George Santayana, and Josiah Royce, and history with Albert Bushnell Hart. He graduated cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy in 1890 and gave a commencement address on Jefferson Davis that drew national attention from the press.
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