Smeared by Gay-Rights Activists

In the early 1950s, my great-uncle, Alphaeus Hunton, went to prison. It was the height of the McCarthy era, and he was serving as trustee of a bail fund established by the Civil Rights Congress, declared by the Subversive Activities Control Board to be a Communist-front organization. The fund posted bail for a group of men convicted of advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Several fled, and my great-uncle -- along with his fellow trustee, the eminent writer Dashiell Hammett -- refused to answer questions before a federal judge about the source of the bail money.