University of Connecticut |
Thomas J. Dodd
Thomas Joseph Dodd, two-term Democratic Senator from Connecticut, was born in Norwich on May 15, 1907. He attended Norwich public schools and graduated from St. Anselm’s Preparatory School in 1926. Dodd earned a bachelor’s degree from Providence College in 1930 and received a law degree from Yale University in 1933. While at Yale, he served as the president of the Yale Democratic Club and assembled a group of young liberals, “the Flying Wedge,” to speak on behalf of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. In 1934 Dodd married the former Grace Murphy of Westerly, Rhode Island, and the couple proceeded to raise a family of six children: Thomas Joseph, Jr., Carolyn, Jeremy, Martha, Christopher and Nicholas.
U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings, a Connecticut native, convinced the young lawyer to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he became a Special Agent. In 1935, Dodd was appointed State Director of the National Youth Administration. In 1938, he became a Special Assistant to the Attorney General and played a pivotal role in the creation of the Justice Departments’ first Civil Rights Division. Among the many cases Dodd prosecuted were those against the Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina and on behalf of the labor’s right to organize and bargain collectively in Georgia. During World War II, Dodd handled espionage and sabotage cases and uncovered industrial fraud by American firms supplying military hardware.
After the war, when the Allied Powers convened an international military tribunal to prosecute accused Nazi war criminals, Thomas Dodd was appointed to the U.S. judicial team at Nuremberg, Germany. He served as Vice Chairman of the Review Board and Executive Trial Counsel for the duration of the proceedings and shaped many of the strategies and policies for this unprecedented series of trials. He concentrated upon proving the charge of conspiracy to wage aggressive war and, consequently, cross-examined leading German industrialists as well as military and political leaders. For his outstanding efforts, Dodd received a Presidential Citation, the U.S. Medal of Freedom, and the Czechoslovakian Order of the White Lion. Upon his return to the United States in 1947, Dodd began the private practice of law in Hartford and became active in Connecticut Democratic politics. He contemplated a run for governor in 1948, but concentrated instead upon civic, charity and service work. In 1950, Dodd campaigned vigorously on behalf of Connecticut Senator Brien McMahon against Senator Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to unseat him. Dodd was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the First District in 1952, a position to which he was re-elected in 1954. He sat on the Government Operations and Foreign Affairs Committees, as well as the Select Committee to Investigate Communist Aggression. After running unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1956 against incumbent Prescott S. Bush, Dodd ran again and defeated Republican William A. Purtell in 1958.
Dodd served on the Foreign Relations Committee, co-chairing its Internal Security Subcommittee; the Judiciary Committee, chairing its Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee; and the Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee. He championed the overhaul of the nation’s gun control legislation even before the assassination of President Kennedy. Dodd ardently supported the civil rights legislation of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, particularly anti-lynching and voting rights laws. He also strove to protect children through such measures as curbing violence on television and stemming the traffic of illegal drugs. Dodd vigorously opposed Soviet Communism, which he considered the moral equivalent of German Nazism. Although an early and enthusiastic supporter of the United Nations, Dodd grew disillusioned with the organization as it came more and more to represent Third World interests. He won a second Senate term in 1964 and became President Johnson’s leading foreign affairs spokesman in the Senate. In 1967, Dodd was censured by his colleagues for improper use of political contributions. In 1970, he ran unsuccessfully for reelection as an independent. Thomas J. Dodd who had devoted his life to public service died in his Old Lyme home on May 24,1971, at the age of 64. The Thomas J. Dodd Papers were donated to the University of Connecticut Libraries in 1994 by Senator Dodd’s children. The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center continues to further the causes that the late Senator held as dear, including most notably the fight for human rights for all. The most notable program is the Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, which is awarded biannually to an individual or a group who has made a significant effort to advance the cause of international justice and global human rights. This page maintained by J. Nelson |
