Published in 1967, as the early triumphs of the Civil Rights movement yielded to
increasing frustration and violence, "The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
"electrified a generation of activists and intellectuals. The product of a
lifetime of struggle and reflection, Cruse's book is a singular amalgam of
cultural history, passionate disputation, and deeply considered analysis of the
relationship between American blacks and American society. Reviewing black
intellectual life from the Harlem Renaissance through the 1960s, Cruse discusses
the legacy (and offers memorably acid-edged portraits) of figures such as Paul
Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, arguing that their work was
marked by a failure to understand the specifically