  The reason, Harold Cruse, a wise and very experienced elder of Left and Nationalist organizations and struggles and a formidable thinker in his own right, was careful to point out, was due to a severe and consequential disruption of the passing-on of experience-tested and verified knowledge from one generation to another by the ravages of the witch-hunting and persecuting of any and all accused of being a Communist or Communist sympathizer during the crusading campaign led by Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s. Many lives and careers were destroyed as a result of McCarthy’s campaign, and many persons and organizations with Leftist commitments were either destroyed or driven underground, or otherwise left severely tainted and thus made an “untouchable” bereft of employment, even for one-time friends and close associates. (W.E.B. Du Bois was one who suffered this fate, which is largely why he made the momentous decision to renounce his citizenship and leave the United States for residence in Ghana, where he died…) The radical Young Turks, then, not short of courage or passion, set out on a mission all but impoverished, in many cases, of much needed historical and intellectual capital, thus were sometimes poorly armed for the battles they sought to wage. Still, the trans-generational disruption that Cruse pointed out was not complete. There were those who filled the gap between the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of the new Black renaissance who would be of significant influence and guidance, and would serve some in the new movements as personal as well as intellectual mentors and role models: Richard Wright, Robert Hayden, Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, among several others.