Between 1949 to 1958 dozens of Communist Party (CPUSA) leaders were tried, some were convicted, and several served prison terms. The cost of anticommunism went beyond the people who were put on trial, their families faced harassment, surveillance, job loss, and illness all while witnessing the constant harassment of their loved ones. As a number of Red Diaper babies (children of communists) have attested, the harassment took a heavy toll on their families. In the case of Claudia Jones, the Trinidad born CPUSA leader, theoretician and activist, after serving time in prison she was then deported to England, a country she had never lived in, away from her only living family members. Behind Jones was her loving father Charles Cumberbatch, a political activist himself who lobbied politicians, parole boards, and judges to seek relief only to lose and face the loss of his daughter and poor health.
The language of anticommunism celebrated family as a bulwark against communism, even while anticommunists targeted and legally harassed the families of those arrested. Sociologist Deborah Gerson has argued that the hypocrisy of anticommunists who argued that the white heterosexual American family was a bulwark was used by communist family members to expose the harassment and the targeting of their families. Even while anticommunists invoked family as a sacred institution, the children of communists were followed by FBI agents, excluded from nursery schools and summer camps, and even harassed by teachers who were informed by agents who their parents were. The spouses of those under indictment could not find work and were often ordered to stay away from other progressives, their own community of friends. The Families of the Smith Act Victims committee was founded in 1951 to help raise funds to support these families; after its founding, Attorney General Herbert Brownell claimed the organization was subversive. Family harassment became official public policy.