Bella Dodd

Bella Dodd (née Visono; 1904 – April 29, 1969 ) was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s ("one of Communism's most strident voices"). She became a vocal anti-communist after she underwent a major conversion upon meeting Fulton J. Sheen, Bishop of Rochester, New York.

Background

Bella Dodd was born Maria Assunta Isabella Visono in 1904 in Picerno, Basilicata region, Province of Potenza, Kingdom of Italy, the youngest of ten children. When her family came to the United States, they were very poor, and stopped going to church. She attended public schools in the New York City area including Evander Childs High School. In 1921, after winning a state scholarship, she attended Hunter College, a public university. She worked summers and received an A.B. in 1925, developing an interest in social issues and drifting into agnosticism. In her senior year, she became president of the student council. She received an MA from Columbia University, writing a thesis entitled "Is Congress a Mirror of the Nation?" She switched to the legal division from Fall 1927 to June 1930, and received a JD from the School of Law at New York University.

In summer 1930 she traveled through Europe; she found Italian Fascism appalling and became vehemently anti-fascist. Dodd met her future husband John Dodd during this trip, and they married in late September. In 1940, her husband left her over political differences. They had no children.

By 1938, Dodd resigned from Hunter College and took a full-time position in the pro-communist TU, and moved her family to Poughkeepsie to ease access to state legislators in Albany. Officially, Dodd was expelled for representing a landlord in a legal dispute with a renter, violating Party bylaws against defense of private property.

Post-Communist career

Catholicism On April 8, 1952, Dodd rejoined the Roman Catholic Church at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, after taking weekly instruction from Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen (whose converts also included Louis F. Budenz and Clare Booth Luce). She became an outspoken proponent for the Catholic Church and a vocal anti-communist, warning against the "materialistic philosophy" which guided public education and demoralized Americans, as well as formed the basis of both Communism and National Socialism.

Congressional Testimony On March 10, 1953, Dodd testified before a televised hearing of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) about covert Party infiltration of labor unions and other institutions. The following day, The New York Times front page stated: "Bella Dodd Asserts Reds Got Presidential Advisory Posts." Dodd had testified that "Communists had got into many legislative offices of Congress and into a number of groups advising the President of the United States," as well as the State of New York's Office of Education in Albany and New York City's Board of Education, and the Party had "read the minds" of some thousand school and college teachers in New York. It had been very easy for her to inject communist beliefs into her teaching: this was the "function of a Communist teacher...to create people willing to accept a Communist government." The only way to root out communism among teachers would be by "a Federal investigating group with subpoena power." She came in last place with 3% of the vote, against Democratic incumbent Leonard Farbstein (easily reelected with 53%), Donald Weeden (Republican), Ralph Denat (Liberal), and David McReynolds (Peace and Freedom).

Dodd died in Manhattan on April 29, 1969, after gall bladder surgery.

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