Martha Biondi
No other book to date has exposed the climate of fear and surveillance that overtook public schooling in New York City in the 1950s. This book succeeds in dramatically revising the image of the Teachers Union, a union with thousands of members and great influence in the largest city in the United States. This is an important story, and Clarence Taylor succeeds in excavating the TU from political ridicule and marginalization. A powerful and important book, with considerable significance to scholars and students in the disciplines of education and history.
— Martha Biondi, Northwestern University, author of To Stand and Fight: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City
Jeffrey B. Perry
Reds at the Blackboard, Clarence Taylor's superb history of the left-led New York City Teachers' Union (1916-1964), fills a void in the historical record of teacher unionism and education in the United States, providing important background on recurring controversies of curriculum, due process, academic freedom, testing, transfers, community involvement, civil rights, and the need for more Black and Latino teachers. This meticulously researched and insightful history of an important social justice union contributes significantly to our understanding of Civil Rights and left history, and it offers important background on the rise of the United Federation of Teachers and the 1968 New York City teacher strikes and community control struggles. It is a timely contribution to the current climate of growing economic depression, persistent racial disparities, war, educational crises, charter schools, and often fractured teacher union and community relations.
— Jeffrey B. Perry, author of Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918
