However, he was a non-conventional artist who worked as an illustrator in the Planning Department of the Boston Naval Shipyards, for most of his career.

Crite’s early paintings are reflective of the daily activities of his surroundings in Boston’s African-American community. Some of Crite’s more iconographic works include his 1930s pen and ink drawings, pen-and-brush drawings, and lithographs that centered on religious themes. "Three Spirituals," among Crite’s most iconographic images shows the artist’s technical expertise rendering in with ink. As in Crite’s other religious illustrations, the figures in Three Spiritualism are represented as African Americans, a testament to the artist’s deeply felt racial pride. This sentiment perhaps emanates from the artist’s early career when he exhibited with members of the Harlem Renaissance.

In Crite’s “neighborhood paintings” series, he highlight’s life in the predominantly African American community of Boston (Roxbury district) where he lived. Per the artists’ own words, “My intention in the neighborhood paintings and some drawings was to show aspects of life in the city with special reference to the use of the terminology “Black” people and to present them in an ordinary light, persons enjoying the usual pleasures of life with its mixtures of both sorrow and joys … I was an artist-reporter, recording what I saw.”