| Martin Dies, Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 2nd district |
|
| In office March 4, 1931 – January 3, 1945 |
|
| Preceded by | John Calvin Box |
| Succeeded by | Jesse Martin Combs |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's At-large district |
|
| In office January 3, 1953 – January 3, 1959 |
|
| Preceded by | District created |
| Succeeded by | District abolished |
| Chairman of the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities | |
| In office 1938–1944 |
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| Preceded by | None |
| Succeeded by | Edward J. Hart (1945) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 5, 1900 Colorado City, Texas |
| Died | November 14, 1972 (aged 72) Lufkin, Texas |
| Political party | Democratic |
Martin Dies, Jr. (November 5, 1900 – November 14, 1972) was a Texas politician and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives. His father, Martin Dies, was also a member of the United States House of Representatives.[1][2]
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Dies was born in Colorado City, Texas. Dies was elected to Texas's 2nd District in the House of Representatives in 1930. Originally, Dies supported the New Deal, but he turned against it by 1937.
Dies along with 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 from 1937 to 1944. Samuel Dickstein, himself was named in the Venona project as a Soviet agent.
In pre-war years and during World War II, HUAC was known as the Dies Committee. Its work was supposed to be aimed mostly at 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,", the Committee actually did little. 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."
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,[3] on a list of Hollywood figures who sent greetings to the leftist Communist-owned French newspaper, Ce Soir.[4] 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".[5] 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."[6]
The Dies Committee was increasingly criticized for employing its resources to further Dies' personal campaign against the New Deal agenda during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Testimony was taken by the Committee against Michigan Governor Frank Murphy during his re-election bid in 1938, by witnesses who proclaimed that Murphy was "a Communist or a Communist dupe". Murphy was defeated, and President Roosevelt denounced the incident at a press conference, saying that "The Dies Committee made no effort to get at the truth,".[7] Other groups subject to Dies's investigations were the U.S. Department of Labor, the WPA Federal Theatre and Writers' Project, and the NLRB. In January 1939, the new Congress voted to quadruple the Dies Committee's budget. The official Report of the Committee Report was released in January 1940 and was toned down, with the material divided evenly between communists and fascists. Dies wrote his own book, The Trojan Horse in America with a larger focus on communism. In 1940, Frank Eugene Hook alleged in Congress that Dies had ties to William Dudley Pelley. However, the documents Hook used to make his case turned out to be forgeries.[8]
Emblematic, however, of the type of scurrilous and even ridiculous accusations with which Congressman Dies occupied himself was a letter which he wrote to Vice President Henry Wallace in March, 1942. Dies claimed that 35 members of the Board of Economic Warfare, of which Vice President Wallace was chairman, had been members of Communist organizations. One member in particular, Maurice Parmelee, was, according to Dies, doubly suspect for advocating nudism. Dies based this latter notion on Mr. Parmalee's 1926 book, titled The New Gymnosophy, assuming this form of asceticism to be advocacy of nudism . These public charges by Dies came at a time in history when the U.S.S.R. was an ally to the United States and Great Britain in resisting the Nazi offensive in Russia. Thus, the fact that the Roosevelt Administration dismissed Dies as a fanciful rumor monger is hardly surprising. Dies's efforts undermined the war effort at a critical juncture, when the war in the Pacific was being badly lost in the wake of the attack at Pearl Harbor. Dies, rather than seeking to ferret out Nazi spies, continued his pre-war fixation on Communist spies in the government, a precursor to the phenomenon of McCarthyism in the 1950s. However, Nazi and fascist spy efforts were far, far less active than were those of the Soviet Union.
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.
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 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.
Dies was reelected to the House in 1952 in an at-large seat when Texas received another seat through reapportionment. Dies ran for the Senate again in 1957, finishing second to Ralph Yarborough. Dies retired again from the House in 1958. He died on November 14, 1972.
| United States House of Representatives | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by John Calvin Box |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's 2nd congressional district 1931–1945 |
Succeeded by Jesse Martin Combs |
| Preceded by District created |
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas's At-large congressional seat 1953–1958 |
Succeeded by District abolished |
| Texas Senate | ||
| Preceded by Ottis E. Lock |
Texas Senate, District 3 1959–1967 |
Succeeded by Charles Wilson |