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Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989
Stanley Crouch identifies the civil rights movement of the last four decades as the defining feature of contemporary American society. In Notes of a Hanging Judge , he explores it from all sides--from its epochal triumphs and the forces that have nearly destroyed it, through its great artistic
and political success stories, to the crime culture it has been powerless to prevent or control--and traces its complex and ambivalent interactions with the feminist and gay dissent that followed its example.
Balancing the passionate involvement of an insider with a reporter's open-minded rigor, and using his virtuosic prose style, Crouch offers uniquely insightful accounts of familiar public issues--black middle-class life, the Bernhard Goetz case, black homosexuals, the career of Louis Farrakhan--that
throw fresh light on the position of Afro-Americans in the contemporary world. Even more revealing are Crouch's accounts of his travels, focusing on his perceptions as a black man, that put places as diverse as Atlanta and Africa, or Mississippi and Italy, in unique new perspectives. Perhaps most
powerful of all are Crouch's profiles of black leaders ranging from Maynard, to Michael, to Jesse Jackson. Crouch's stern evaluations have been controversial, especially his vision of the Civil Rights Movement as a noble cause "gone loco," mired in self-defeating ethnic nationalism and condescending
self-regard, and conspicuously lacking in the spiritual majesty that ensured its great political victories. His discussions of artistic figures, including extended critiques of Toni Morrison and Spike Lee, have also incited much debate.
Taken together, these essays represent a major reinterpretation of black, and therefore American, culture in our time.
and political success stories, to the crime culture it has been powerless to prevent or control--and traces its complex and ambivalent interactions with the feminist and gay dissent that followed its example.
Balancing the passionate involvement of an insider with a reporter's open-minded rigor, and using his virtuosic prose style, Crouch offers uniquely insightful accounts of familiar public issues--black middle-class life, the Bernhard Goetz case, black homosexuals, the career of Louis Farrakhan--that
throw fresh light on the position of Afro-Americans in the contemporary world. Even more revealing are Crouch's accounts of his travels, focusing on his perceptions as a black man, that put places as diverse as Atlanta and Africa, or Mississippi and Italy, in unique new perspectives. Perhaps most
powerful of all are Crouch's profiles of black leaders ranging from Maynard, to Michael, to Jesse Jackson. Crouch's stern evaluations have been controversial, especially his vision of the Civil Rights Movement as a noble cause "gone loco," mired in self-defeating ethnic nationalism and condescending
self-regard, and conspicuously lacking in the spiritual majesty that ensured its great political victories. His discussions of artistic figures, including extended critiques of Toni Morrison and Spike Lee, have also incited much debate.
Taken together, these essays represent a major reinterpretation of black, and therefore American, culture in our time.
304 pages, Paperback
Published March 28, 1991
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About the author
Stanley Crouch
33 books57 followersStanley Lawrence Crouch was an American poet, music journalist & jazz critic, biographer, novelist, educator and cultural commentator. He was also both a civil rights activist and a musician as a young man.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stanley Crouch attended Thomas Jefferson High School, graduating in 1963. He continued his education at area junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement, working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He gained a reputation as a talented young poet, and in 1968 became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College (Claremont, California); he then taught theatre and literature at Pomona College (Claremont, California). In 1969, a recording of him reading several of his poems was released as an LP by Flying Dutchman Records. This was followed by his first book, a collection of his poems published in 1972 by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Co.
During the early 1970s, Mr. Crouch also pursued a parallel career as a musician, playing the drums in a progressive jazz group called Black Music Infinity, which he had formed with saxophonist & clarinetist David Murray, and which also featured saxophonist Arthur Blythe. In 1975, Mr. Crouch & Mr. Murray moved from California to New York City, where they lived above an East Village jazz club called the Tin Palace. Mr. Crouch functioned as the club's booking agent for a while, and he both chronicled and participated in the thriving avant-garde jazz scene in New York at that time, along with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer and Olu Dara, among many others. There were also a number of other poets, as well as photographers, painters and other visual artists actively involved in that milieu. By the end of the 1970s, however, Mr. Crouch had for the most part given up the drums, and his role as a musician, to concentrate on writing.
In 1980 Mr. Crouch joined the staff of the Village Voice, where for the next several years he further honed his craft as a writer. He was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 1987 he became an artistic consultant for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, along with Wynton Marsalis, for whom he had become a friend and intellectual mentor. After leaving the Village Voice in 1988, Crouch published 'Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989', which was selected by The Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published in 1990. He received a Whiting Award in 1991, which was followed in 1993 by a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Crouch continued to write for newspapers and magazines in addition to writing books. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News, and eventually became a syndicated columnist. He also appeared in several documentary films and was a frequent guest on television programs. His first novel, 'Don't the Moon Look Lonesome' was published in 2000, and 'Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker', his biography of the revered jazz musician, in 2013.
In addition to his writing on music and the arts generally, Mr. Crouch was one of the most incisive writers and socio-cultural commentators on race relations in the U.S., which was a frequent topic of his articles and books. In 2003 he was fired from the magazine 'JazzTimes' after an article he had written on racism in the music business had caused a somewhat overblown and ridiculous controversy. Probably not coincidentally, he was selected in 2005 as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. Mr. Crouch was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction, and he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2019.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Stanley Crouch attended Thomas Jefferson High School, graduating in 1963. He continued his education at area junior colleges and became active in the civil rights movement, working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He gained a reputation as a talented young poet, and in 1968 became poet-in-residence at Pitzer College (Claremont, California); he then taught theatre and literature at Pomona College (Claremont, California). In 1969, a recording of him reading several of his poems was released as an LP by Flying Dutchman Records. This was followed by his first book, a collection of his poems published in 1972 by the Richard W. Baron Publishing Co.
During the early 1970s, Mr. Crouch also pursued a parallel career as a musician, playing the drums in a progressive jazz group called Black Music Infinity, which he had formed with saxophonist & clarinetist David Murray, and which also featured saxophonist Arthur Blythe. In 1975, Mr. Crouch & Mr. Murray moved from California to New York City, where they lived above an East Village jazz club called the Tin Palace. Mr. Crouch functioned as the club's booking agent for a while, and he both chronicled and participated in the thriving avant-garde jazz scene in New York at that time, along with musicians such as Henry Threadgill, James Blood Ulmer and Olu Dara, among many others. There were also a number of other poets, as well as photographers, painters and other visual artists actively involved in that milieu. By the end of the 1970s, however, Mr. Crouch had for the most part given up the drums, and his role as a musician, to concentrate on writing.
In 1980 Mr. Crouch joined the staff of the Village Voice, where for the next several years he further honed his craft as a writer. He was honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. In 1987 he became an artistic consultant for the Jazz at Lincoln Center program, along with Wynton Marsalis, for whom he had become a friend and intellectual mentor. After leaving the Village Voice in 1988, Crouch published 'Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979-1989', which was selected by The Encyclopædia Britannica Yearbook as the best book of essays published in 1990. He received a Whiting Award in 1991, which was followed in 1993 by a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant and the Jean Stein Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Mr. Crouch continued to write for newspapers and magazines in addition to writing books. He wrote a column for the New York Daily News, and eventually became a syndicated columnist. He also appeared in several documentary films and was a frequent guest on television programs. His first novel, 'Don't the Moon Look Lonesome' was published in 2000, and 'Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker', his biography of the revered jazz musician, in 2013.
In addition to his writing on music and the arts generally, Mr. Crouch was one of the most incisive writers and socio-cultural commentators on race relations in the U.S., which was a frequent topic of his articles and books. In 2003 he was fired from the magazine 'JazzTimes' after an article he had written on racism in the music business had caused a somewhat overblown and ridiculous controversy. Probably not coincidentally, he was selected in 2005 as one of the inaugural fellows by the Fletcher Foundation, which awards annual fellowships to people working on issues of race and civil rights. Mr. Crouch was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In 2016, he was awarded the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize for non-fiction, and he was named an NEA Jazz Master in 2019.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 24, 2026
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS/REVIEWS ABOUT WRITERS, SOCIETY, AND MORE
Stanley Lawrence Crouch (1945-2020) was an author, columnist, and cultural critic.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1990 book, “These essays, reviews, and columns are largely concerned with the struggles and fascinations surrounding racism, sexism, and sexual orientation. The period given the most attention was kicked off by the Civil Rights Movement, which was as important to … this society as the fall of colonialism was to sovereign representation in the United Nations.” (Pg. ix)
He continues, “Many of my evaluations are stern. In the years since 1979, when the first of these pieces was written, I have become something of a hanging judge, much like Henry Morgan, who sent many of his former irate buddies to the gallows, certain that they deserved what they got. Experience has made me equally confident in my vision of how a noble movement went loco. Having been born in 1945, I consider myself part of an undeclared lost generation that ran into the xenophobic darkness, retreating from the complex vision of universal humanism that underlay the Civil Rights Movement….
“As I look back on it now, I would say that I found myself moving from philosophical and active involvement with the Civil Rights Movement into the ethnic nationalism that began to take hold … after the Watts Riot of 1965. It was then that I began earnestly reading the works of the Negritude writers, of African novelists and playwrights, of Franz Fanon, of LeRoi Jones… and started publishing essays, poems, and reviews … But the work that this movement produced more often than not wasn’t worth reading, much less reviewing or celebrating. I soon began to fall out with the movement and was often accused of having been influenced by … ‘Western standards,’ code for being a traitor to the revolution.” (Pg. x-xi)
“I was indeed a traitor to that movement and have since become even more hostile to its ideas, which helped send not only black America but this nation itself into an intellectual tailspin on the subjects of race, of culture, of heritage…. [I] believe that the issues surrounding Afro-American life are so crucial to any comprehensive understanding of this country and the directions of its policies that Negro intellectuals need to be as honest as possible… In New York, where the black media hid under the bed as the fraud at the center of the [Tawana] Brawley became clearer and clearer, it was obvious that few black writers or commentators … were courageous enough to say what most close observers more than sensed. This is quite dangerous. It means that the Afro-American leadership is embarrassed: after all these years of asserting that whites should vocally separate themselves from the racists, demagogues, and hysterics in their midst, few black people in positions of responsibility are willing to do what they demand of others.” (Pg. xi)
“If anything, when this book is not a celebration of those who found their way through the briar patches… of American challenges, it is a series of attacks on clichés, sentimentality, and the demagoguery that endangers the excluded as much as it does any other group. These essays, reviews, and columns look at the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, at the forces that destroyed the thrust and substance of that epic point in American political history… With the exception of the first piece… all the essays were written during my stay at ‘The Village Voice,’ where my position as staff writer gave me great freedom… and made it impossible for me not to come face to face with the feminist and homosexual liberation movements.” (Pg. xi-xii)
Attending a book party and reading by Michele Wallace at a bookstore, he was told things by white people, such as, “‘Those things about Norman Mailer romanticizing the primitive violence of black men and his ideas being picked up the Eldridge Cleaver and LeRoi Jones… Those kinds of things are important.’… when asked how they were able to evaluate its validity since they were neither black women nor black men and weren’t privy to the inner workings of the organizations during the ‘60s that Wallace criticized, they said things like ‘If one can read a book and that book is well-written, then one will learn.’ … While the whites were telling me this, the blacks there, most of whom hadn’t read the book, were busy passing around a calendar of corny and pornographic cartoons of black men and women, which I found ironically hilarious. In the old days, I would have been slightly embarrassed. I guess I don’t feel as responsible for every black person as I used to.” (Pg. 31-32)
In a 1979 essay, he states, “I think the guilt [that James Baldwin tries to impose on his white readers] is all a waste of time, for guilt is not what black people need to inspire in white people… What is needed is a breaking away by writers, readers, and various speakers for the black cause from simplistic, pot-boiled ideas, from the howling propaganda that is the Madison Avenue version of politics and social comment.” (Pg. 41)
In a 1981 essay, he says, “I am opposed to almost all the cries from prisoners and their advocates for minimum wage, color television, and other creature comforts. Prisons were not built to make people comfortable or to acknowledge their ethnic cultures. Jews, Catholics, Muslims and Hispanics … were incarcerated because they committed crimes, because they brutally or slyly broke the law.” (Pg. 97)
In a 1987 essay, he reports, “Toni Morrison… separated herself from … Stokely Carmichael, LeRoi Jones, Eldridge Cleaver, and H. Rap Brown… [She] told an interviewer that ‘these books and political slogans about power were addressed to white men, trying to explain or prove something to them. The fight was between men, for the king of the hill.’ Yet none of the black women whom Morrison proceeded to celebrate---Toni Cade Bambara, Gayle Jones, Alice Walker---took any significant positions of their own against the wrongheadedness of a black politics that mixed a romanticized African past with separatist ideas, virulent anti-white racism, and threats to overthrow the government of the United States ‘by any means necessary.’ Morrison didn’t either.” (Pg. 204)
He says of Morrison’s novel ‘Beloved’: “That Morrison chose to set the Afro-American experience in the framework of collective tragedy is fine, of course. But she lacks a true sense of the tragic. Such a sense is stark, but it is never simple-minded. For all the memory within this book, including recollections of the trip across the Atlantic and the slave-trading in Caribbean, no one ever recalls how the Africans were captured. That would have complicated matters. It would have required that the Africans who raided the villages of their enemies to sell them for guns, drink, and trinkets be included in the equation of injustice, something far too many Afro-Americans are loath to do---including Toni Morrison. In ‘Beloved’ Morrison only asks that the readers tally up the sins committed against the darker people and feel sorry for them, not experience the horrors of slavery as they do.” (Pg. 205)
In a 1988 essay, he comments, “By 1963, when he published ‘The Fire Next Time,’ James Baldwin’s writing had become almost exclusively polemical, foreshadowing the narrowing of all black commentary into strident prosecution or spiteful apology. Considered the intellectual component of the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin was a seminal influence on the subsequent era of regression in which Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, LeRoi Jones and Eldridge Cleaver transformed white America into Big Daddy and the Negro movement into an obnoxious, pouting adolescent demanding the car keys.” (Pg. 231)
During a visit to Rome, he recalls seeing a group of African women, and he comments: “As I looked at these African women, I wondered if the descendants of slaves owned by fellow Africans would ever influence the world in the way those who were brought to America had. I knew then that slavery was as much ironic luck as it was enormous misfortune, since what U.S. slaves had endured made for a culture in which celebration was a form of protest that remade social, aesthetic, and athletic conventions. We are indeed fortunate to live in a period when we can see changes that began when the first slaves ran away from the plantation or learned to play the fiddle or sing hymns or read…. Africans will probably learn their lessons the hard way, as others have, and then push more chairs to the big table of world power.” (Pg. 264)
Crouch’s essays will appeal to a variety of readers.
Stanley Lawrence Crouch (1945-2020) was an author, columnist, and cultural critic.
He wrote in the Introduction to this 1990 book, “These essays, reviews, and columns are largely concerned with the struggles and fascinations surrounding racism, sexism, and sexual orientation. The period given the most attention was kicked off by the Civil Rights Movement, which was as important to … this society as the fall of colonialism was to sovereign representation in the United Nations.” (Pg. ix)
He continues, “Many of my evaluations are stern. In the years since 1979, when the first of these pieces was written, I have become something of a hanging judge, much like Henry Morgan, who sent many of his former irate buddies to the gallows, certain that they deserved what they got. Experience has made me equally confident in my vision of how a noble movement went loco. Having been born in 1945, I consider myself part of an undeclared lost generation that ran into the xenophobic darkness, retreating from the complex vision of universal humanism that underlay the Civil Rights Movement….
“As I look back on it now, I would say that I found myself moving from philosophical and active involvement with the Civil Rights Movement into the ethnic nationalism that began to take hold … after the Watts Riot of 1965. It was then that I began earnestly reading the works of the Negritude writers, of African novelists and playwrights, of Franz Fanon, of LeRoi Jones… and started publishing essays, poems, and reviews … But the work that this movement produced more often than not wasn’t worth reading, much less reviewing or celebrating. I soon began to fall out with the movement and was often accused of having been influenced by … ‘Western standards,’ code for being a traitor to the revolution.” (Pg. x-xi)
“I was indeed a traitor to that movement and have since become even more hostile to its ideas, which helped send not only black America but this nation itself into an intellectual tailspin on the subjects of race, of culture, of heritage…. [I] believe that the issues surrounding Afro-American life are so crucial to any comprehensive understanding of this country and the directions of its policies that Negro intellectuals need to be as honest as possible… In New York, where the black media hid under the bed as the fraud at the center of the [Tawana] Brawley became clearer and clearer, it was obvious that few black writers or commentators … were courageous enough to say what most close observers more than sensed. This is quite dangerous. It means that the Afro-American leadership is embarrassed: after all these years of asserting that whites should vocally separate themselves from the racists, demagogues, and hysterics in their midst, few black people in positions of responsibility are willing to do what they demand of others.” (Pg. xi)
“If anything, when this book is not a celebration of those who found their way through the briar patches… of American challenges, it is a series of attacks on clichés, sentimentality, and the demagoguery that endangers the excluded as much as it does any other group. These essays, reviews, and columns look at the achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, at the forces that destroyed the thrust and substance of that epic point in American political history… With the exception of the first piece… all the essays were written during my stay at ‘The Village Voice,’ where my position as staff writer gave me great freedom… and made it impossible for me not to come face to face with the feminist and homosexual liberation movements.” (Pg. xi-xii)
Attending a book party and reading by Michele Wallace at a bookstore, he was told things by white people, such as, “‘Those things about Norman Mailer romanticizing the primitive violence of black men and his ideas being picked up the Eldridge Cleaver and LeRoi Jones… Those kinds of things are important.’… when asked how they were able to evaluate its validity since they were neither black women nor black men and weren’t privy to the inner workings of the organizations during the ‘60s that Wallace criticized, they said things like ‘If one can read a book and that book is well-written, then one will learn.’ … While the whites were telling me this, the blacks there, most of whom hadn’t read the book, were busy passing around a calendar of corny and pornographic cartoons of black men and women, which I found ironically hilarious. In the old days, I would have been slightly embarrassed. I guess I don’t feel as responsible for every black person as I used to.” (Pg. 31-32)
In a 1979 essay, he states, “I think the guilt [that James Baldwin tries to impose on his white readers] is all a waste of time, for guilt is not what black people need to inspire in white people… What is needed is a breaking away by writers, readers, and various speakers for the black cause from simplistic, pot-boiled ideas, from the howling propaganda that is the Madison Avenue version of politics and social comment.” (Pg. 41)
In a 1981 essay, he says, “I am opposed to almost all the cries from prisoners and their advocates for minimum wage, color television, and other creature comforts. Prisons were not built to make people comfortable or to acknowledge their ethnic cultures. Jews, Catholics, Muslims and Hispanics … were incarcerated because they committed crimes, because they brutally or slyly broke the law.” (Pg. 97)
In a 1987 essay, he reports, “Toni Morrison… separated herself from … Stokely Carmichael, LeRoi Jones, Eldridge Cleaver, and H. Rap Brown… [She] told an interviewer that ‘these books and political slogans about power were addressed to white men, trying to explain or prove something to them. The fight was between men, for the king of the hill.’ Yet none of the black women whom Morrison proceeded to celebrate---Toni Cade Bambara, Gayle Jones, Alice Walker---took any significant positions of their own against the wrongheadedness of a black politics that mixed a romanticized African past with separatist ideas, virulent anti-white racism, and threats to overthrow the government of the United States ‘by any means necessary.’ Morrison didn’t either.” (Pg. 204)
He says of Morrison’s novel ‘Beloved’: “That Morrison chose to set the Afro-American experience in the framework of collective tragedy is fine, of course. But she lacks a true sense of the tragic. Such a sense is stark, but it is never simple-minded. For all the memory within this book, including recollections of the trip across the Atlantic and the slave-trading in Caribbean, no one ever recalls how the Africans were captured. That would have complicated matters. It would have required that the Africans who raided the villages of their enemies to sell them for guns, drink, and trinkets be included in the equation of injustice, something far too many Afro-Americans are loath to do---including Toni Morrison. In ‘Beloved’ Morrison only asks that the readers tally up the sins committed against the darker people and feel sorry for them, not experience the horrors of slavery as they do.” (Pg. 205)
In a 1988 essay, he comments, “By 1963, when he published ‘The Fire Next Time,’ James Baldwin’s writing had become almost exclusively polemical, foreshadowing the narrowing of all black commentary into strident prosecution or spiteful apology. Considered the intellectual component of the Civil Rights Movement, Baldwin was a seminal influence on the subsequent era of regression in which Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, LeRoi Jones and Eldridge Cleaver transformed white America into Big Daddy and the Negro movement into an obnoxious, pouting adolescent demanding the car keys.” (Pg. 231)
During a visit to Rome, he recalls seeing a group of African women, and he comments: “As I looked at these African women, I wondered if the descendants of slaves owned by fellow Africans would ever influence the world in the way those who were brought to America had. I knew then that slavery was as much ironic luck as it was enormous misfortune, since what U.S. slaves had endured made for a culture in which celebration was a form of protest that remade social, aesthetic, and athletic conventions. We are indeed fortunate to live in a period when we can see changes that began when the first slaves ran away from the plantation or learned to play the fiddle or sing hymns or read…. Africans will probably learn their lessons the hard way, as others have, and then push more chairs to the big table of world power.” (Pg. 264)
Crouch’s essays will appeal to a variety of readers.
November 12, 2022
Although he has some colossal blind spots (for instance, women), Crouch’s opinions on literature, art, politics are largely well thought out and appear sincere rather than glibly contrarian. He writes beautifully.
January 11, 2021
Though written some years ago, Crouch's voice is fresh, vibrant, and sounds contemporary.
December 21, 2021
Read this book years ago. Love him or hate him, agree or disagree, Stanley Crouch was a bad man when it came to the craft of writing. Or, as Crouch would say, "a major man".
February 4, 2026
Very dated, commenting on politics of the 70's and 80's. His way of writing is intriguing--initially it draws you in, but then you have a hard time really understanding it.
April 16, 2026
I came across this book in Harvard Square when it was brand new. I found that I skipped through a lot of it to the good parts. Stanley Crouch eats Spike Lee for breakfast, etc. Crouch led me to Charles Johnson, another brother on the okey doke circuit. There is a great deal of bad blood between Crouch and others of the original Watts Poets. Crouch evidently was one of the boys but in a me too sort of way. He was less spirited than his contemporaries.
February 27, 2013
Well worth the time to read. Got me off cultural nationalism forever. The first chapter on Jesse Jackson is a horrid slog. After that it improves greatly.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews