Negro Intellectual

Towards the end of the Civil Rights Movement, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual was published in 1967. Speaking to the audience of creative Black intellectuals who were the voices and advocates of the African American community, he charged the readers with four central task of becoming conscious of the various black advancement movements and their purpose, analyzing the pendulum between intergrationalist and separatist, and identifying the political, economic, and cultural requirements for black advancement in order to mend them into a single politics of progressive black culture, and combining all the task to recognizing the uniqueness of the American condition. Cruse bids for a “cultural revolution by a critical assault on the methods and ideology “cultural revolution by a critical assault on the methods and ideology of the old-guard Negro intellectual elite. The failures and ideological shortcomings of this group have meant that no new directions, or insights have been imparted to

E. B Du Bois, and Woodson, Cruse wrote from a subjective view point, using personal experience and observation as a primary source to speak on the Black experience in Harlem as it relates to the broader diaspora within the United States. Cruse definitely took on some of the perspectives of Marxism and Communism when it came to the African American community being able to function more effectively when within a communal American system. With a very quarrelsome and cranky tone Cruse is critical of the integrationist among black intellectuals, name-calling out Black leaders like Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Claude McKay and Black organizations like the National Negro Congress. While criticizing integrationist, he prolifically tones in on cultural political action and the dire need for black intellectuals, activist, and cultural representatives to take advocacy seriously as they are the platform for metamorphosing the American system and