William E. Dodd, Jr.

William Edward Dodd, Jr. (Aug. 8, 1905 - Oct. 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.

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 Virginia farm. 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 and his sister had a close relationship to Daniel C. Roper, President Roosevelt’s first Secretary of Commerce. Through William Jr. and Roper, William Sr. passed on to President Roosevelt his interest in receiving an ambassadorship.

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