Video still from Talented Teeth, Adwoa Amoah, 2013

The ability to be intelligent, have broad sympathy, knowledge of the world and of the relation of men to it was W.E.B. Du Bois’s advocacy for higher intellectual education. The Talented Tenth employs light and fire to address issues of leader- ship, power, and knowledge, bringing to bear ideas of sharing and reconstruction. The video begins with a single matchstick emerging from a dark background. The blurry element symbolizes the difficulty and struggle to build and achieve, to educate the best minds of a black race and disseminate them into the general population, thus allowing the general enlightenment of all.