His father, Al, a Senate-appointed investigative attorney on Capitol Hill, later a union leader in San Francisco, attended a few Party meetings; his mother, Sylvia, participated in the party's campaigns on behalf of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and to desegregate swimming pools. When Truman's loyalty boards began passing judgment, in 1947, on government employees' fitness to serve, Al Bernstein was defense counsel in some 500 such cases. His own union career derailed, he opened a laundry. In 1954, his wife was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The FBI was a constant presence in their son's boyhood and adolescence.