Harold Cruse

Harold Wright Cruse (March 8, 1916 – March 25, 2005) was an American academic who was an outspoken social critic and teacher of African American studies at the University of Michigan until the mid-1980s. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual (1967) is his best-known book.

Harold Cruse was born March 8, 1916, in Petersburg, Virginia. His father was a railway porter. After his parents divorced, Cruse moved to New York City, New York. Cruse became interested in the arts as a young man, thanks in large measure to his close relationship with an aunt who often took him to shows on the weekend. During World War II, Cruse joined the U.S. Army and served in Europe and north Africa. Upon returning home, he attended the City College of New York without graduating. In 1947 Cruse joined the Communist Party for several years. Citing a November 26, 1956, document contained in an FBI's declassified Internal case file (No. 100-370842 of assorted documents date August 7, 1950, to January 9, 1969) on Harold Cruse obtained under provisions of Freedom of Information Act, Washington University in St. Louis Associate Professor of English and African-American Studies William J. Maxwell noted on page 106 of his 2015 book F.B. Eye that "Harold Cruse" was "recruited as an undercover Communist Party informant (he proved willing to name names of onetime co-members, but nothing more)."

In the mid-1960s Cruse, along with LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), founded the Black Arts Theater in Harlem. Cruse viewed the arts scene as a white-dominated misrepresentation of black culture, epitomized by George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess and Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun.

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