Pete told me about Josh. The FBI were hounding him. He received death threats.
He was a black man in trouble in a white world. Pete forgave him. Burl's situation was different. He had achieved popularity on a commercial industry level.

Many blacklisted people eventually reclaimed their jobs after McCarthy was defeated.
They were courageous to stand up to McCarthy.

There was a time when folk music was deemed subversive.

It got so bad that Pete who (although he didn't invent the term) popularized the concept of a hootenanny and was barred from appearing on Jack Linkletter's Hootenanny TV show. It was like Charlie Parker being banned from Birdland but the former was strictly on political grounds.