Cruse, Harold Wright, 1916-2005

Harold Cruse, an outspoken social and cultural critic who was best known for his angry collection of essays, "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual," died Saturday in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 89. The cause was congestive heart failure, his companion, Mara Julius, said.

Largely self-educated and widely read, Mr. Cruse taught African-American studies at the University of Michigan and was one of the first blacks to get tenure at a major university without a college degree. He ranged over many subjects in his writing: politics, radicalism, music, culture and the situation of black people in America.

In "Crisis" he summed up a set of positions that left him isolated from almost everyone else in the political spectrum of the mid-1960's.

He was against integration. "Integrate with whom?" he asked. He deplored the black-power movement as being all slogans and no political program. He opposed the back-to-Africa campaign, although he had grudging admiration for Garveyism. Despite a brief association with the Communist Party, he abominated Communists and liberals -- in particular, Jewish intellectuals, whom he blamed for black anti-Semitism. He was critical of almost everyone, from James Baldwin to Ossie Davis to Lorraine Hansberry, for accepting too readily the premises of white culture.

He concluded that blacks must form their own political, economic, social and cultural base to work on all fronts toward an accommodation with capitalism as it was modified by the New Deal.

Mr. Cruse's book stirred up strong reactions in many quarters. But Christopher Lasch wrote in The New York Review of Books that he agreed with book's thesis, as he put, "that intellectuals must play a central role in movements for radical change." A new edition of "Crisis" will be published next month.

A year after its original publication, Mr. Cruse was asked to lecture at the University of Michigan, where he became involved in the African-American studies program until his retirement in the mid-1980's as professor emeritus.

Harold Wright Cruse was born in Petersburg, Va., on March 8, 1916, and moved with his father, a railway porter, to New York City as a young child. After graduating from high school, he worked at several jobs but was ambitious to become a writer. He served in the Army in Europe during World War II.

After the war, he attended the City College of New York briefly but never graduated. In 1947, he joined the Communist Party and wrote drama and literary criticism for The Daily Worker, although he was never doctrinaire. In the 1950's, he wrote several plays, and in the mid-1960's he was co-founder, with LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), of the Black Arts Theater and School in Harlem.The more he learned about the arts, the more he deplored what he saw as a white appropriation of black culture, particularly as exemplified by George Gershwin's folk opera "Porgy and Bess." He called for blacks to embrace their cultural uniqueness.

His later books include "Rebellion or Revolution?", "Plural but Equal: A Critical Study of Blacks and Minorities and America's Plural Society" and "The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader" edited by William Jelani Cobb with a foreword by Stanley Crouch.

In addition to Ms. Julius, his survivors include two half sisters, Shirley Toke, of Richmond, Va., and Catherine Jones, of Petersburg.

Harold Wright Cruse (March 8, 1916 – March 25, 2005) was an American academic who was a social critic and teacher of African American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967) is his best-known book.
Harold Cruse was born March 8, 1916, in Petersburg, Virginia.[1] His father was a railway porter. After his parents divorced, Cruse moved to New York City, New York. Cruse became interested in the arts as a young man, thanks in large measure to his close relationship with an aunt who often took him to shows on the weekend. During World War II, Cruse joined the U.S. Army and served in Europe and north Africa.[2] Upon returning home, he attended the City College of New York without graduating.

In 1947 Cruse joined the Communist Party for several years. Citing a November 26, 1956, document contained in an FBI's declassified Internal case file (No. 100-370842 of assorted documents date August 7, 1950, to January 9, 1969) on Harold Cruse obtained under provisions of Freedom of Information Act, Washington University in St. Louis Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies William J. Maxwell noted on page 106 of his 2015 book F.B. Eye that "Harold Cruse" was "recruited as an undercover Communist Party informant (he proved willing to name names of onetime co-members, but nothing more)."

After publishing The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual in 1967, he was invited to lecture at the University of Michigan (1968) and taught in the African-American Studies program at the Center for Afro-American and African Studies there until the mid-1980s.[3] Cruse was one of the first African-American studies professors, becoming one of the first to earn tenure without holding a college degree.

A theme of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is that intellectuals must play a central role in movements for radical change. This idea re-appeared in Cruse's other works including Rebellion or Revolution, a compilation of essays, and Plural But Equal.

On March 25, 2005, Cruse died from congestive heart failure while living in an assisted-living facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was survived by his partner of 36 years, Mara Julius.