The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual is Harold Cruse's exploration of what black intellectuals from the mid 1940s up until the mid 1960s were not doing, followed by what he thought they ideally should be doing. As Cruse was on a mission to analyze and critique the realm of historical and contemporary black intellectual leadership, virtually every intellectual, activist, scholar, and writer was subject to his pen. Among the people that he took it upon himself to criticize was Marcus Garvey. He claimed that Garvey did not fulfill his mission of repatriation to Africa and the proof of this was the fact that there were no Garvey settlements on the continent of Africa. He also challenged the political unity of Garvey and his movement, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). In addition, Cruse claimed that there was no place in the black community for black or white Communists. He even blamed Communism for the fall of one of the greatest leadership organizations, The African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), saying that Communism caused a rift among the organization's members.

[Page 209]Cruse's focus was on creating a new approach to resolve the issues left behind by other black intellectuals by synthesizing their works. He recommended that the following four tasks be taken up by all black intellectuals:

• 1.
  knowing their own intellectual ancestors and the movements in which those ancestors were involved
• 2.
  synthesizing integration and black nationalism into a single and consistent analysis
• 3.
  identifying and prioritizing political, economic, and cultural needs for the advancement of the race
• 4.
  understanding that American conditions are unique when analyzing the American race issue

Cruse structured his text to include social commentary, biography, historical essays, and political commentary. He concentrated on certain issues affecting the black community, such as the rift between black political radicals and black political conservatives. What Cruse observed as problematic was that intellectuals often had disputes over strategies of protesting and the idea of accommodation. He insisted that black history was a history of conflict between integrationist and nationalist forces in politics, economics, and culture. Politics, economics, and culture were arguably Cruse's greatest ideological concerns. He maintained that these three issues (and blacks' coming to terms with a synthesis of them) were of major importance to black progress. Cruse asserted that, of these three, culture is the most important, because blacks must understand themselves before they will be able to make any meaningful political or economic gains as a whole.

Cruse's book, though written in the 1960s, is still widely read and appreciated by Black Studies scholars and students. Many of the historical truths outlined by Cruse then still hold true today; also, Cruse's analyses of these truths are currently accepted in many intellectual circles. For example, he spoke extensively about the manner in which the American mass media controls society, and particularly black life. He also focused on the importance of black artistic expression, and how it was virtually owned and operated by white publishing companies. He cited the collapse of the American Negro Theatre, which was due to white involvement. Thus, one of the most important things that The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual was able to do was to transcend its own time and find relevance in another generation.

...