The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership-Fast Shipping

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Published in 1967, as the early triumphs of the Civil Rights movement yielded toincreasing frustration and violence, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual electrifieda generation of activists and intellectuals.

The product of a lifetime of struggleand reflection, Cruse’s book is a singular amalgam of cultural history, passionatedisputation, and deeply considered analysis of the relationship between Americanblacks and American society.

Reviewing black intellectual life from the Harlem Renaissancethrough the 1960s, Cruse discusses the legacy (and offers memorably acid-edged portraits)of figures such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, arguing thattheir work was marked by a failure to understand the specifically American characterof racism in the United States.

This supplies the background to Cruse’s controversialcritique of both integrationism and black nationalism and to his claim that blackAmericans will only assume a just place within American life when they develop theirown distinctive centers of cultural and economic influence. For Cruse’s most importantaccomplishment may well be his rejection of the clichés of the melting pot in favorof a vision of Americanness as an arena of necessary and vital contention, an openand ongoing struggle.