Obituaries for Harold Cruse
1. Washington Post
2. New York Times
3. Ann Arbor News
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Social Critic, Essayist Harold Cruse Dies
By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday,
March 29, 2005; Page B08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8334-2005Mar28.html
Harold Cruse, 89, a captivating, sometimes audacious
voice in black social, political and artistic life for
five decades whose best-known work was the essay
collection "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual," died
March 25 at an assisted living facility in Ann Arbor,
Mich. He had congestive heart failure.
Mr. Cruse had been a student of the theater --
stagehand, failed playwright -- an Army veteran, a
Communist, an ex-Communist, a teacher, an essayist and
a polemicist. But overall, he saw himself as a
dissident who offered political critiques along
artistic lines.
He used writing to explore issues of social justice and
equality; relationships between blacks and Jews (he
resented the idea that a great bond existed between the
groups); and black literature that appealed to mass,
white audiences. He considered it farcical that
Lorraine Hansberry's play "A Raisin in the Sun" would
be considered a realistic portrait of working-class
Chicago life.
He criticized notable figures of all races, from the
Gershwins for "stealing" Harlem jazz to black scholar
Cornel West, whose fondness for quoting European
philosophers annoyed him.
A New Yorker reviewer was not far off when he wrote
that "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual," published
in 1967, "will infuriate almost everyone." Viewed by
some as a brilliant rant and others as engaging but
flawed, the book established the author as a leading
personality among black thinkers of the day.
William Jelani Cobb, an assistant history professor at
Spelman College who edited "The Essential Harold
Cruse," wrote that next to "The Autobiography of
Malcolm X" and Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the
Earth," Mr. Cruse's book was "required reading among
Black Powerites."
Mr. Cruse held a dubious view of capitalism and its
economic influence over the working class and the
media. But he also believed that pragmatism was more
influential in contemporary life than the social and
racial utopias promoted by American Marxists and
Communists.
Fascinated by the intersection of the arts and social
change, he slammed white pop and jazz musicians and
composers who "achieved status and recognition in the
1920s for music that they literally stole outright from
Harlem nightclubs." He called for black performers and
technicians to boycott any future production of the
Gershwin folk opera "Porgy and Bess," which he
considered "a symbol of that deeply-ingrained American
cultural paternalism practiced on Negroes ever since
the first Southern white man blacked his face."
Neither did he feel the Harlem Renaissance, the
artistic movement of the 1920s, was a success. It was
integrationist in nature, he said, and did not meet his
standards for addressing black identity.
Because of the book's notoriety, Mr. Cruse was invited
to lecture at the University of Michigan in 1968.
Within a decade, he had risen to full professor of
history -- reportedly one of the first blacks without a
college degree to receive tenure at a major university.
In 1970, he helped found the university's Center for
Afroamerican and African Studies. He retired in the
mid-1980s as professor emeritus of history and African
American studies.
Harold Wright Cruse was born in Petersburg, Va., on
March 8, 1916, and was taken to New York by his father,
who had divorced his mother.
He was determined to be a writer, but he also developed
a lifelong appreciation for the arts through an aunt
who took him to black vaudeville shows on the weekends.
Early on, he did technical work at the YMCA theater in
Harlem.
After Army service during World War II, he attended the
George Washington Carver School, a Harlem institution
run by the poet Gwendolyn Bennett, where he heard civil
rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois lecture. He regarded the
school as "the Communist Party's cultural base in
Harlem."
He had a short stint writing for the Communist
newspaper the Daily Worker and failed in his attempts
as a playwright in the mold of Abram Hill, a founder of
the American Negro Theater whose plays "Hell's Half
Acre" and "On Strivers Row" he admired.
He visited Cuba in 1960 as part of a delegation of
black intellectuals; wrote for newspapers and
magazines; and taught black history for the Black Arts
Repertory Theatre/School, founded in Harlem by the
writer Amiri Baraka.
After retiring from Michigan, he wrote "Plural but
Equal" (1987), a book that was damning of the 1954
Brown v. Board of Education decision in which the U.S.
Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public
schools.
"As it was implemented in the South," he wrote, "the
Brown decision eliminated black teachers, black
principals, black administrators, a whole generation of
experienced administrative public school personnel made
superfluous by integration."
He concluded that "the progress of racial integration
as public policy can be seen as a process that has left
the majority of the black population stranded and
stalled at the edges of power while the inner sanctums
were protected from change."
Survivors include his companion of 36 years, Mara
Julius of Ann Arbor, and two half-sisters.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
===
Harold Cruse, Social Critic and Fervent Black
Nationalist, Dies at 89
By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
The New York Times March 30, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/national/30cruse.html
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.
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===
Noted cultural critic, U-M professor Cruse dies at 89
Influential educator and author generated intense
dialogue about racial issues
Tuesday, March 29, 2005BY
DAVE GERSHMAN News Staff Reporter
Ann Arbor News
http://www.mlive.com/news/aanews/index.ssf?/base/news-12/111211087532880.xml
Harold Cruse, a self-taught educator and cultural
critic who became the first director of the Center for
Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of
Michigan, died Friday after a long illness.
Cruse, 89, was one of the most influential and widely
read cultural critics of his era, friends and scholars
said. His 1967 book, "The Crisis of the Negro
Intellectual," came out at a time when the civil rights
movement was giving way to the Black Power movement,
and the book was a must-read that took on all of the
icons and ideologies of the day, they said. The book,
which was a bestseller, is being republished.
After the book came out, U-M asked Cruse to come to Ann
Arbor as a visiting honors professor. Cruse, who had
never graduated from college, was named the first
director of the Afroamerican Studies Program in 1969
and director of the center from 1972-73. He was
promoted to full professor in 1977 and retired in 1984.
"He was extremely bright and also very industrious,"
said Mara Julius, his longtime significant other.
"Without formal schooling, he compensated by educating
himself."
In a statement, James Jackson, director of the Center
for Afroamerican and African Studies, said Cruse's
service to the university was indispensable.
Cruse was born in Virginia in 1916. During World War
II, he served in the U.S. Army in Italy and northern
Africa, among other places. While in the Army, he was
trained as a journalist. After the war, he wrote
freelance stories from New York.
Some of his pieces were published in the newspaper for
the Communist Party, which Cruse joined in 1947. The
party had preached racial equality. Cruse lectured and
debated on street corners about the virtues of
socialism and communism before becoming disenchanted
with the party. He had a fierce independent streak, his
friends said.
While his earlier writing had made him a figure among
the black left, the book, "Crisis," elevated his
stature with its powerful prose, insight and
irreverence, said Ronald Woods, the interim head of the
African American Studies Department at Eastern Michigan
University. The book argued that black intellectuals
were too often borrowing ideas from other groups
instead of examining the historical circumstances of
African Americans in the struggle to realize racial
equality.
"Harold Cruse generated intense dialogue on all sides
of the spectrum," said Woods, who had Cruse as a
teacher while a graduate student at U-M. "This was the
real genius and power of the book."
Cruse went on to publish several other books and
pieces, including an unpublished musical. Before his
death at an Ann Arbor assisted living facility, he had
completed several chapters of a rough draft of a new
book.
As a teacher, Cruse was effective and well liked,
although he expected students to work hard. Cruse's own
work ethic was legendary. He was an avid reader who
expressed his opinions strongly, said John Woodford,
the retired executive editor of Michigan Today.
"Even though he wasn't a trained professor, he was sort
of a quintessential professor," Woodford said.
A memorial service is being scheduled.
Dave Gershman can be reached at (734) 994-6818 or
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© 2005 Ann Arbor News. Used with permission
Copyright 2005 Michigan Live. All Rights Reserved.
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