Cherny applied the "Page 99 Test" to his latest book, San Francisco Reds: Communists in the Bay Area, 1919-1958, and reported the following:
Page 99 is part of a discussion of the experiences of three women, Communist Party members, who were incarcerated in California's women's prison in the mid-1930s. One was convicted of perjury when it was claimed that she had not personally collected all voters' signatures on a petition to place the CP on the state ballot. The other two were convicted under the state's criminal syndicalism law for their activities in the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, the party's union for farm workers. Here's part of page 99:Learn more about San Francisco Reds at the University of Illinois Press website.The three CP women were assigned to the 'incorrigibles' section of the prison, with perpetrators of serious crimes or those who had physically attacked a prison matron. Though locked in individual cells at night, they were free to walk around their floor during the day and to mingle with other prisoners. Each floor had a kitchen and dining room, and each prisoner had assigned work. Todd washed pots, pans, and dishtowels. Conklin was a cook. Decker worked outside as a gardener; she also cultivated vegetables in a small personal garden and shared them with the other two CP women.If someone were to open San Francisco Reds to page 99, it would not indicatie what the book is about. By itself, page 99 may suggest that the book is about incarcerated women, which is not at all the case. In the entire book, only about one and a half pages (including all of page 99) deal with the experience of party members in prison.
Party members and sympathizers deluged them with mail. Prison rules prohibited them from receiving CP publications, but their correspondents snuck in a few. Prison rules allowed an unlimited number of visitors but limited each visitor to once per month. Party leaders came, and so did Upton Sinclair, Anna Louise Strong, and Hollywood celebrities, as well as family members and friends. The three women gathered in one of their cells each afternoon, to share mail, discuss prison issues, and sometimes eat vegetables from Decker's garden. Unlike Frank Spector and other CP prisoners at San Quentin, they did not proselytize among the prisoners, although they did try to create a sense of community and succeeded in organizing a Thanksgiving dinner during which the women were permitted to converse.
San Francisco Reds is a history of the Communist Party in the San Francisco Bay area from its origin in 1919 to the late 1950s. I develop that history through the experiences of some fifty individuals, most of whom held local leadership positions. I look at why they joined, what they did as party members, how they understood the party and their roles as party members, and, for most of them, why they became so disillusioned with the CP that they left. By 1958, the majority had left the party. I also look at their lives after 1958, both those who left and those who remained. Along the way, I look at the things that CP members accomplished, especially during the CP's Popular Front phases in the 1930s and WWII: supporting unions, fighting for the Spanish republic, legal defense activities, supporting New Deal Democrats, opposing fascism. Those who left continued to do many of the same things that they had done during the Popular Front phases--they supported liberal Democrats, opposed racism and war, supported civil liberties and unions. I also look at four important civil liberties decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in cases involving San Francisco CP members.
--Marshal Zeringue