University of Virginia Library

Cruse Emphasizes Effects Of Afro-American Culture

By Neill Alford

Photo By Andy Stickney

Harold Cruse, Professor Of History At University Of Michigan

Mr. Cruse Spoke To Gathered Students On The Value Of Afro-American Culture

Asserting the importance of the
cultural side of black American
experience, Harold Cruse,
Writer-in-Residence and Professor of
History at the University of Michigan,
discussed on Monday night the evolution
of Afro-American culture and its bearing
on contemporary racial interaction.

Mr. Cruse, who has written a great
number of books and articles on various
aspects of black history, spoke as the
second lecturer during Black Culture
Week in Newcomb Hall Ballroom.

Emphasizing that black Americans are not
Africans, but "an historical product of a unique
American experience, involving both blacks and
whites," he pointed to the adaptation to the
New World which was necessary for settlers of
both races.

He said that, although after the American
Revolution black hopes for equality were
dashed, blacks continued to develop a distinct
subculture within the larger framework of
white culture.

"Blacks were forced into a new kind of
separatism," he said, pointing to the
independent black church as a prime cultural
institution, and to the black poetry and
literature of that period.

Africanization

"Whites were very sensitive about being
Africanized," Mr. Cruse declared. "This
attitude led to denying the positive cultural
attributes" of the blacks and resulted in an
attempt to create a race of "black
Anglo-Saxons." This feeling, he stated, laid the
basis for the creation of a "peasant class,"
leading an agricultural way of life.

Mr. Cruse affirmed, however, that the black
presence had a subtle and unintentional cultural
effect on whites, particularly in the South,
where a closer relationship traditionally existed
between blacks and whites. Realization of this
effect, he contended, produced a "dual
attitude" in Southern white intellectuals
toward race relations, accompanying the
"peasant class" concept.

During the second half of the nineteenth
century, he said, whites became increasingly
attracted to the cultural contributions of blacks
made through the interpretive arts and music.
These contributions, providing a distinctly
American form of culture when white
Americans were trying to copy European music
and art, attained a prominent position in the
evolving national culture, Mr. Cruse declared.

Contribution

He stated that the contributions to black
education by W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T.
Washington, as well as others, and the
increasing urbanization of blacks after World
War I, began the evolution of a black educated
class, which would be able to render "the folk
tradition in a higher form."

Photo By Andy Stickney

Mr. Cruse, Noted Author Of Black Culture.

Professor Looks To History For Seeds Of Present Day Problems

Mr. Cruse contended, however, that blacks
born after World War II have tended to
discount the efforts of the early educated class,
and that "black studies must pick up the
threads left by these black intellectuals," and
reassess the events of the past.

Giovanni Address

An address scheduled for yesterday by poet
Niki Giovanni of Livingstone College, Rutgers
University, and writer Toni Cade, also of
Livingstone College, was cancelled due to a
mixup in contract arrangements.

Further activities for Black Culture Week
include a speech by Elizabeth Duncan Koontz,
director of the Women's Bureau, U.S.
Department of Labor, on Wednesday night at 8
in the Chemistry Building Auditorium.

On Thursday, Acklyn Lynch, professor of
education, University of Michigan, will speak at
2 p.m. in the South Meeting Room of
Newcomb Hall. At 4 p.m. in the South Meeting
Room, Barbara Sizemore, director of the
Woodlawn Experimental School's Project in
Chicago, will discuss some aspects of education.