Harold Cruse

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Harold Wright Cruse (March 8, 1916-March 30, 2005) was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African-American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. His most recognized work is the collection of essays, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, which was published in the mid-1960s. One of the resounding themes in Crisis was, as Christopher Lasch put it, that intellectuals must play a central role in movements for radical change."

[edit] Post-War

After returning home Cruse attended the City College of New York, however he never graduated. In 1947 he joined the Communist party briefly. In the mid-1960's Cruse, along with LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), founded the Black Arts Theater in Harlem. Cruse viewed the arts scene as a white-dominated misrepresentation of black culture, epitomized by George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess and Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. He was against integration, stating "Integrate with whom?"; instead proposed that blacks must form their own separate political, economic and cultural base.

[edit] List of works

Rebellion or Revolution?
The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
Plural but Equal: A Critical Study of Blacks and Minorities and America's Plural Society
The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader edited by William Jelani Cobb with a foreword by Stanley Crouch.