American politician (1900?1972)
Martin Dies Jr.
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![](//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Martin_Dies.png/220px-Martin_Dies.png) |
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In office
March 4, 1931 ? January 3, 1945
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Preceded by
| John Calvin Box
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Succeeded by
| Jesse Martin Combs
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Constituency
| 2nd district
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In office
January 3, 1953 ? January 3, 1959
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Preceded by
| district created
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Succeeded by
| district abolished
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Constituency
| At-large district
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In office
1938?1944
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Preceded by
| office established
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Succeeded by
| Edward J. Hart
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Born
| (
1900-11-05
)
November 5, 1900
Colorado City, Texas
, U.S.
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Died
| November 14, 1972
(1972-11-14)
(aged 72)
Lufkin, Texas
, U.S.
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Political party
| Democratic
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Spouse
|
Myrtle McAdams
(
m.
1920)
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Children
| 3, including
Martin Dies Jr.
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Parents
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Alma mater
| University of Texas
National University School of Law
(LLB)
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Occupation
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Martin Dies Jr.
(November 5, 1900 ? November 14, 1972), also known as
Martin Dies Sr.
, was a
Texas
politician and a
Democratic
member of the
United States House of Representatives
.
[1]
He was elected as a Democrat to the Seventy-second and after that to the six succeeding
Congresses
(March 4, 1931 ? January 3, 1945). In 1944, Dies did not seek renomination to the Seventy-ninth Congress, but was elected to the Eighty-third and to the two succeeding Congresses (January 3, 1953 ? January 3, 1959). Again, he did not seek renomination in 1958 to the Eighty-sixth Congress. In 1941 and 1957, he was twice defeated for the nomination to fill a vacancy in the
United States Senate
. Dies served as the first chairman of the
Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities
from 1937 through 1944 (Seventy-fifth through Seventy-eighth Congresses).
[2]
[3]
Background
[
edit
]
He was born in
Colorado City, Texas
, on November 5, 1900,
[4]
to
Martin Dies Sr.
, who was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1909 to 1919. He studied at the
University of Texas
and obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree at the
National University School of Law
, Washington, DC.
[3]
Career
[
edit
]
Dies worked as an attorney in
Marshall, Texas
and
Orange, Texas
and eventually became a district judge.
[3]
In 1931, Dies was elected from Texas
2nd District
to the
House of Representatives
, a constituency that his father represented for a decade, thus becoming a second generation Democratic U.S. congressman.
[3]
[5]
After the
Wall Street Crash of 1929
, Dies wrote in the Chicago
Herald-Examiner
that the "large alien population is the basic cause of unemployment."
[6]
: 377
Due to the support of fellow Texan
John Nance Garner
, he became a member of the important
House Rules Committee
. At the beginning, Dies fully supported the
New Deal
as it aimed to provide relief for the distressed rural areas, which he represented in Congress. However, being a conservative Southerner, he turned against it after the 1936 election, when labor unions started to play a much bigger role in national politics.
[3]
[7]
In 1938, he started as a chairman of the
Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities
and remained at its helm until 1944. At ease with newsmen, Dies was frequently in the national media spotlight.
House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities
[
edit
]
Dies relaxes as he speaks to reporters (November 7, 1938)
Dies and
Samuel Dickstein
created the
House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities
, initially nicknamed the Dies Committee, later becoming HUAC in 1946. Dies was its first chairman, serving for seven years from 1938 to 1944, and declaring a crusade against right-wing and left-wing subversives in the government, and other organizations nationwide. Dies' committee mainly targeted communist infiltrators and sympathizers. Samuel Dickstein was named in the 1990s as a Soviet agent in the
Venona project
materials.
Dies Committee and the KKK
[
edit
]
Dies receives "
Heil Hitler
" from first witness John Metcalfe, former Chicago reporter, then committee investigator who infiltrated Nazis under name Hellmut Oberwinder (August 12, 1938
In pre-war years and during World War II, HUAC was known as the Dies Committee. Its work was aimed at investigating fascist and communist subversive activist. Dies targeted
German American
involvement in
Nazi
and
Ku Klux Klan
activity, such as the
German American Bund
. As to investigations into the activities of the "Klan", some members of the Committee showed reluctance to investigate. When HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that: "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," committee member
John E. Rankin
added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution."
[8]
However, Dies himself personally berated
Imperial Wizard
James A. Colescott
for the Klan's anti-Catholicism.
[9]
As chairman, Dies pursued Nazis, labor unions, New Deal agencies, and communist or communist-affiliated groups, from which he gained a national reputation and even published a book about his exploits,
The Trojan Horse of America
(1940).
[3]
Shirley Temple and Hollywood
[
edit
]
Dies speaks with fellow committee member
J. Parnell Thomas
, who had recently sponsored a bill of impeachment against Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins
, to discuss forthcoming testimony of Felix McWhirter (May 23, 1939)
While there had been earlier Congressional hearings on
communist
and Nazi activity, such as by
Hamilton Fish
in 1932 and McCormack and Dickstein in 1934, the Dies Committee hearings captured greater public attention and scrutiny. In 1938, the Committee was criticized for including
Shirley Temple
, who was 10 years old at the time,
[10]
on a list of
Hollywood
figures who sent greetings to the
leftist
Communist-owned French newspaper,
Ce Soir
.
[11]
The
Roosevelt Administration
mentioned the attacks when
Harold Ickes
,
Secretary of the Interior
, stated: "They have found dangerous
radicals
there led by little Shirley Temple."
Secretary of Labor
Frances Perkins
added that Shirley Temple was born an American citizen and should not have to debate such "preposterous revelations".
[12]
The Committee responded to these attacks via an
NBC
broadcast, in which the testimony of Dr.
J. B. Matthews
, which launched the Shirley Temple outcry was read
verbatim
. In this testimony, Dr. Matthews stated:
The Communist Party relies heavily on the carelessness or indifference of thousands of prominent citizens in lending their names for its
propaganda
purposes. For example, the French newspaper
Ce Soir
, which is owned outright by the Communist Party, featured hearty greetings from
Clark Gable
,
Robert Taylor
,
James Cagney
, and even Shirley Temple. ... No one, I hope, is going to claim that any one of these persons in particular is a Communist.
[13]
Backlash
[
edit
]
Actress
Florence Eldridge
, actor
Fredric March
, and Martin Dies at
Dies Committee
hearings in Los Angeles (1940)
Dies was criticized for using his Committee to further his personal campaign to undermine the
New Deal
agenda during the late 1930s and early 1940s. For example, Michigan Governor
Frank Murphy
lost his re-election bid in 1938 after being labeled "a Communist or a Communist dupe" during testimony before the Committee. The
Labor Department
, the
WPA Federal Theatre Project
and
Writers' Project
, and the
National Labor Relations Board
were subjected to similar denunciations.
[14]
While the Committee ostensibly investigated both suspected Communists and Fascists, Dies was concerned primarily with a supposed Communist conspiracy, as reflected in his own book,
The Trojan Horse in America
.
[15]
In 1940, Congressman
Frank Eugene Hook
sought to discredit the Committee, and Dies personally, by presenting evidence linking Dies to the agitator and spiritualist
William Dudley Pelley
; but Dies was able to show that the documents cited by Hook were forged.
[16]
Dies articulated concerns of the "racial question" as it related to minimum wage provision under the Fair Labor Standards Acts, stating, "What is prescribed for one race must be prescribed for the others, and you cannot prescribe the same wages for the black man as for the white man."
[17]
Encouraged by his victory over Hook and a quadrupling of his Committee's budget, Dies' accusations became progressively more scurrilous.
[18]
In March 1942, he wrote a letter to Vice President
Henry Wallace
claiming that 35 members of the
Board of Economic Warfare
, which Wallace chaired, had been members of Communist organizations. He singled out one member in particular, Maurice Parmelee, as both a Communist sympathizer and a
nudist
, based on Parmelee's 1926 book,
The New Gymnosophy
.
[19]
Parmelee was indeed an advocate for
gymnosophy
, a form of
asceticism
originated by two German nudist activists, but its relevance to American national security was never convincingly explained.
[20]
[21]
Dies' public charges and rumor-mongering after June 1941 came at a time when the
USSR
was a member of the
allied nations
resisting the Nazi offensive in Europe and North Africa. Rather than assisting the effort to ferret out Nazi spies during
World War II
, Dies continued his pre-war fixation and focused almost entirely on Communist spies in the U.S. government?a precursor to
the McCarthy era
during the 1950s.
[22]
Later life
[
edit
]
Martin Dies, Jr., official portrait for the US Congress (1952)
Dies was an unsuccessful candidate for the
United States Senate
in a special election held in late June, 1941 to fill the seat vacated by the death of Senator
Morris Sheppard
. Dies finished a distant fourth, losing to the sitting Governor,
Pappy O'Daniel
who narrowly beat Congressman
Lyndon B. Johnson
in Johnson's first run for the Senate.
[23]
Dies was a critic of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations
, having found 280 salaried CIO organizers within its ranks funded by the Soviet-backed
Communist Party of the USA
. Dies retired from the House in 1944 (or 1945
[3]
) after the CIO began a voter registration drive in his district and found a candidate to oppose him. Dies supported the anti-Roosevelt
Texas Regulars
in the
1944 presidential election
.
[
citation needed
]
Dies was reelected to the House in 1952 in an at-large seat when Texas received another seat through
reapportionment
. In 1957, he ran for the Senate again in a
special election
to finish the term of
Price Daniel
, who left the Senate to become governor of Texas. Dies finished with 30 percent of the vote, second to
Ralph Yarborough
, who led with 38 percent. Republican
Thad Hutcheson
, a
Houston
lawyer, finished third with 23 percent.
[24]
No runoff was then required in Texas special elections, though Dies and Hutcheson collectively held 53 percent of the vote. Yarborough hence took the Senate seat, which he held until January 3, 1971. Dies was a signatory to the 1956
Southern Manifesto
that opposed the desegregation of public schools ordered by the Supreme Court in
Brown v. Board of Education
.
[25]
Dies retired again from the House in January 1959. From 1953 to 1959, "he held no important positions."
[3]
Dies returned to Texas to practice law.
[26]
Death and legacy
[
edit
]
In 1920, Dies married Myrtle McAdams and had three sons: Robert, Jack, and
Martin Jr.
, who became a Texas state senator and
Secretary of State of Texas
.
[27]
[28]
Dies died November 14, 1972, of an apparent heart attack at the age of 72.
[29]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Ex-Rep. Martin Dies, 71, Is Dead. Led Un-American Activities Unit"
.
New York Times
. November 15, 1972
. Retrieved
2008-03-20
.
Former Representative Martin Dies, first chairman of the controversial House Committee on Un-American Activities, died tonight, apparently of a heart attack. He was 71 years old. engaging in "un-American activities."
- ^
"Martin Dies Jr"
.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
. Retrieved
2011-04-19
.
Dies, Martin Jr. (son of Martin Dies), a Representative from Texas; born in Colorado, Mitchell County, Tex., November 5, 1900; moved with his parents to Beaumont, Tex., in 1902; ...
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
"Martin Dies, Jr"
. Encyclopedia Britannica. 20 July 1998
. Retrieved
27 December
2022
.
- ^
"Dies, Anti-Red Solon, Is Dead"
.
The Fresno Bee
. 1972-11-15
. Retrieved
2022-01-04
.
- ^
Parrish, Michael E.
The Hughes Court Justices, Rulings, and Legacy
. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2002. pp. 67?68.
- ^
Navarro, Sharon Ann; Mejia, Armando Xavier (2004-01-01).
Latino Americans and Political Participation: A Reference Handbook
. ABC-CLIO. p. 23.
ISBN
9781851095230
.
- ^
Pederson, William D.
The FDR Years
. New York: Facts on File, 2006. p. 211.
- ^
John Gunther
Inside U.S.A.
,
(London,
Hamish Hamilton
, 1947, p. 789)
- ^
Newton, Michael (2010).
The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi A History
. Jefferson, N.C.:
McFarland & Company
pp. 100?101.
- ^
Temple Black, Shirley (Oct 1989).
Child Star: An Autobiography
. New York: Warner Books (mass market paperback edition, first printing). pp.
252?253
.
ISBN
0-446-35792-8
.
- ^
Current Biography 1940, pp. 241?43
- ^
Martin Dies Story, pp. 104?05
- ^
Martin Dies Story, p. 104
- ^
Current Biography 1940, at 242
- ^
Dies, M.
The Trojan Horse in America
. Dodd, Mead & Company (1940). ASIN B0006AP2Q6
- ^
"THE CONGRESS: Smoke"
.
Time
. February 12, 1940
. Retrieved
July 27,
2021
.
- ^
Congressional Record, 75th Congress, 2nd Sessions (1937), 82:1404
- ^
"Dies 'Un-American' hunt is a racket"
.
The Daily Telegraph
. Vol. VII, no. 9. New South Wales, Australia. 1 April 1942. p. 4
. Retrieved
15 September
2020
– via National Library of Australia.
- ^
Parmelee, Maurice (1927).
The new gymnosophy
. New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock.
- ^
Hartman, William E. (1970).
Nudist society: an authoritative, complete study of nudism in America
. New York: Crown. p. 21.
- ^
Flynn, John T. (2005).
The Roosevelt myth
. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. pp. 306?308.
- ^
Review of
The Trojan Horse in America
at spyinggame.me, retrieved September 7, 2016.
- ^
Special Election 1941
. Texas Almanac, 1943-1944. 1943. pp. 259?260
. Retrieved
2022-12-27
.
- ^
"TX U.S. Senate Special Election, April 2, 1957"
. ourcampaigns.com
. Retrieved
October 2,
2013
.
- ^
Badger, Tony.
Southerners Who Refused to Sign the Southern Manifesto
.
JSTOR
. Retrieved October 7, 2021.
- ^
"Dies, Martin, Jr"
. Office of the Historian of the US House of Representatives
. Retrieved
27 December
2022
.
- ^
"Martin Dies Seeking Third Congress Term"
.
The Cameron Herald
. 1956-07-05
. Retrieved
2022-01-04
.
- ^
"A State of Remembrance"
(PDF)
.
State of Texas
. 2003-04-24
. Retrieved
2022-01-05
.
- ^
"Ex?Rep. Martin Dies, 71, Is Dead; Led Un?American Activities Unit"
.
The New York Times
. November 15, 1972
. Retrieved
June 1,
2021
.
External links
[
edit
]
- United States Congress.
"Martin Dies Jr. (id: D000338)"
.
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
.
- Office of the Historian of the US House of Representatives - Dies, Martin, Jr.
- Martin Dies Jr.
from the
Handbook of Texas
Online
- FBI Electronic reading room - Martin Dies Jr.
- Texas State Library and Archives - Papers of U.S. Representative Martin Dies
- UNT Digital Library - Oral History Interview with Martin Dies, Jr., April 23, 1966
- CSUN Digital Library - Telegram, Martin Dies to Leon Lewis, 1938
- Columbia University Libraries - Letter from Martin Dies, Chairman of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, to Frances Perkins, requesting Harry Bridges case file
This article incorporates
public domain material
from the
Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
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