William E. Dodd, Jr.

William Edward Dodd Jr. (August 8, 1905 – October 18, 1952) was an American political activist who ran unsuccessfully for Congress during the 1930s. While working for the Federal Communications Commission in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s, he became the target of an early congressional crusade against alleged communist sympathizers and subversives. A 1943 amendment to an emergency war appropriations bill deprived Dodd and two other federal officials of their salary and positions. Three years later, the United States Supreme Court declared the law's provision to be an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

Dodd was the son of William E. Dodd, who served as United States Ambassador to Germany between 1933 and 1938, and the brother of Martha Dodd, who had affairs with Nazis and a Soviet NKVD agent before becoming an accused secret agent of the Soviet Union.

Personal background Dodd was born in Ashland, Virginia, to Randolph-Macon College history professor William E. Dodd and Martha Ida "Mat" Johns Dodd. Three years later, his father joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, while retaining his farm in Loudoun County, Virginia. William Jr. received his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago, and his master's degree from Harvard University. He then taught history in Washington D.C., Rutgers, The College of William and Mary, and the University of California. He married and had two sons. He and his sister had a close relationship with Daniel C. Roper, During his father's tenure as ambassador, William Jr. and his father met with President Roosevelt in Hyde Park, New York. In 1936, he testified in London in favor of protecting Spain's republican government against attacks from fascist-backed rebels, and in 1937 raised money on behalf of homeless Spanish children of the Basque region. He served as chairman of the Japanese Boycott Committee, the American League Against War and Fascism, and the American Committee for Anti-Nazi Literature.

Candidacy for the U.S. House In 1938, at age 32, Dodd sought the Democratic nomination for Virginia's 8th congressional district, which was directly across the Potomac River from Washington. The seat was held by four-term incumbent Howard W. Smith, a conservative Democrat on the United States House Committee on Rules who used his position to obstruct parts of the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal agenda. Smith was also a powerful lieutenant in the Byrd Organization, led by U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, who questioned many aspects of the New Deal, from its fiscal policies to support for racial integration. Dodd ran as an ardent supporter of the New Deal, with the support of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes and others in the President's circle. Dodd was not known to many voters, had little campaign organization in the district, and little political experience. Like several other New Dealers seeking to unseat "disloyal" incumbent Democrats in 1938 primaries, Dodd lost badly. Smith outpolled Dodd by a 3 to 1 margin.

After his defeat, Dodd returned to his father's farm in then rural Loudoun County, Virginia and worked on a book on his father's experiences in Germany. Only four days after that announcement, however, the engagement was broken. The following year William wed another social activist, Audrey Koolish of Chicago. They had two sons, Thomas Allen Dodd (born in September 1941), and Peter Johns Dodd. After his marriage to Audrey ended in divorce, Dodd married Kathryn Hubbard.

After Ambassador Dodd died in early 1940, William Jr. established the William E. Dodd Foundation. It was intended to advance his father's Jeffersonian ideals, but it soon came under fire for financing U.S. Week, a periodical written and edited by leftists. In 1941, Dodd and his sister co-edited "Ambassador Dodd's Diary: 1933-1938," based on the diaries their father kept during his tenure in Berlin.

Federal Communications Commission In 1942, Dodd became an assistant editor with the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service, a branch of the Federal Communications Commission.

As the Supreme Court would later state in its ruling in United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946), "Notwithstanding the congressional enactment, and the failure of the President to reappoint respondents, the agencies kept all the respondents at work on their jobs for varying periods after November 15, 1943; but their compensation was discontinued after that date." On June 3, 1946, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that judgment. Writing for the court, Justice Hugo Black viewed the amendment as more than an appropriations measure, but as one that prohibited the officials from ever holding a government job. He was 47.