Stanley Lawrence Crouch (December 14, 1945 – September 16, 2020)[1] was an American poet, music and cultural critic, syndicated columnist, novelist, and biographer.

As a child he was a voracious reader, having read the complete works of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many of the other classics of American literature by the time he finished high school.

His mother told him of the experiences of her youth in east Texas and the black culture of the southern midwest, including the Kansas City jazz scene.

A quote from the rioting, "Ain't no ambulances for no nigguhs tonight", was used as a title for a polemical speech that advocated black nationalist ideas, released as a recording in 1969;[5] it was also used for a 1972 collection of his poems.

In 1975, he sought to further his endeavors with a move from California to New York City, where he shared a loft with Murray above an East Village club called the Tin Palace.

While working as a drummer, Crouch conducted the booking for an avant-garde jazz series at the club, as well as organizing occasional concert events at the Ladies' Fort.

His critiques of his former co-thinkers, whom he refers to as a "lost generation", are collected in Notes of a Hanging Judge: Essays and Reviews, 1979–1989 and The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race: The Long and the Short of It, 1990–1994.

He identified the embrace of racial essentialism among African-American[nb 1] leaders and intellectuals as a diversion from issues more central to the betterment of African Americans and society as a whole.

[nb 1] Crouch was critical of, among others: Alex Haley, the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Roots: The Saga of an American Family;[15] community leader Al Sharpton;[16] filmmaker Spike Lee;[17] scholar Cornel West,[18] and poet and playwright Amiri Baraka.

[19] Crouch was also a fierce critic of gangsta rap music, asserting that it promotes violence, criminal lifestyles, and degrading attitudes toward women.

[20] With this viewpoint, he defended Bill Cosby's "Pound Cake Speech"[21] and praised a women's group at Spelman College for speaking out against rap music.

"[23] From the late 1970s, Crouch was critical of forms of jazz that diverge from what he regarded as its essential core values, similar to the opinions of Albert Murray on the same topic.

[30] After Jazz, Crouch appeared in other Burns films, including the DVD for the 2002 remastered version of The Civil War and the 2004 documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson.