Loyalties (Magill Book Reviews)

At a glance:

Democratic President Truman issued his Loyalty Order on March 21, 1947 in response to pressure put on him by a largely Republican Congress, and their popular platform of the previous year’s fall election campaign: “Communism or Republicanism.” The Order called for the Attorney General to create “a list of subversive organizations, membership in which (or association with, or even proximity to) was used by the loyalty boards to pass on an individual’s loyalty to the country--and thus an individual’s fitness to serve in the government.” Employees would be branded disloyal and dismissed solely on the basis of unsworn reports in the secret files of the FBI. They were never formally charged, were denied a trial by jury, and were not allowed to confront their accusers. “There were 12,859 of these cases filed between 1947 and 1953,” mostly against employees sympathetic to progressive causes.

Alfred Bernstein, the author’s father, defended more than five hundred of these cases in his capacity as director of negotiation for the United Federal Workers of America. As a result of actions taken by the loyalty boards, the union was decimated and Bernstein could find work only in the laundry business. His wife Sylvia, the author’s mother, was called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American activities. All this had a traumatic effect on the entire family, as the Bernsteins became social pariahs to anyone who had not suffered the same fate.

Bernstein chronicles those frightening times clearly and thoroughly. His book shows how easily our government can deny its citizens the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In our era of Supreme Court reversals on civil and reproductive rights, LOYALTIES offers a sobering moral.

Sources for Further Study

Booklist. LXXXV, February 15, 1989, p.962.Chicago Tribune. March 19, 1989, XIV, p.1.

Loyalties I BERNSTEIN 547

Los Angeles Times Book Review. April 9, 1989, p.2.

The Nation. CCXLVIII, April 10, 1989, p.489.

National Review. XLI, April 7, 1989, p.48.

The New Republic. CC, March 27, 1989, p.28.

The New York Times Book Review. XCIV, March 5, 1989, p.9.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXXV, February 10, 1989, p.59.

Time. CXXXIII, March 20, 1989, p.80.

The Washington Post. March 2, 1989, p. D2.