Robert Cherny taught American political history at San Francisco State University for decades, focusing on the Progressive Era and preceding periods. His book American Politics in the Gilded Age: 1868-1900 (Wiley-Blackwell, 1997) and other writings have informed the thought of generations of college students and academics with regard to the dimensions of a period depressingly foreshadowing our own in terms of a vast wealth and influence gap that also yielded major shifts in popular response and political innovation at state and local levels to over-weaning, monolithic economic power and arrogance.

Along the way, however, his 30-year dive into the story of waterfront labor leader Harry Bridges in preparation of the major biography he brought out in early 2023 inevitably led him to consider the history that unfolded through the post-World War I years. While the Bridges book was in preparation, other material led to his publication of a book on the Coit Tower muralist Victor Arnautoff and the implications of Arnautoff’s work for political art, made particularly timely when one of Arnautoff’s murals in a local high school became the subject of intense scrutiny and debate, and to the recent publication of a book on the Coit Tower murals themselves, as well as the major book to be discussed today, published in May of last year: San Francisco Reds.

Earlier this month, Prof. Cherny presented his book looking at the murals at Coit Tower, their genesis and their resonance. We’re pleased to offer Prof. Cherny this opportunity to discuss San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area 1919 to 1958, providing as it does a context for our current cultural and political life.