Bella Dodd

Bella Dodd was born Maria Assunta Isabella Visono in 1904 in Picerno, Basilicata region, Province of Potenza, Kingdom of Italy, the youngest of ten children.

When her family came to the United States, they were very poor, and stopped going to Church.

She attended public schools in the New York City area including Evander Childs High School.

In 1921, after winning a state scholarship, she attended Hunter College, a public university.

She worked summers and received an A.B. in 1925, developing an interest in social issues and drifting into agnosticism.

In her senior year, she became president of the student council.

She received an MA from Columbia University, writing a thesis entitled "Is Congress a Mirror of the Nation?"

In fall 1925, Dodd got her first job as a substitute teacher of history at Seward Park High School.

In February 1926, she began teaching at Hunter College, which she continued even after passing the New York bar exam in 1931.

From 1926 to 1938, Dodd taught political science and economics at Hunter College.

She switched to the legal division from Fall 1927 to June 1930, and received a JD from the School of Law at New York University.

In summer 1930 she traveled through Europe; she found Italian Fascism appalling and became vehemently anti-fascist.

Dodd met her future husband John Dodd during this trip, and they married in late September.

On route home from Europe in 1930, Dodd met a group of New York City school teachers in the Teachers Union.

She started attending union meetings, but she "found them disconcerting because there was so much strife between groups seeking control."

She took off time from work after her marriage, but returned to Hunter College by 1932 when the Great Depression affected both her parents and husband.

(Charles J. Hendley was TU president 1935–1945.) Party leaders like Jack Stachel and William Z. Foster demanded that American workers become "politicalized" and "proletarianized."

Through the intervention of friend and mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, Dodd got leave again.

A first bill she helped pass led to her promotion as a TU legislative representative, for which she took a six-month leave of absence from Hunter College in Spring 1936, taking over from TU co-founder Abraham Lefkowitz.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), teachers volunteered for the Lincoln Brigade: Dodd names Sid Babsky and Ralph Wardlaw.

TU membership rose above 9,000, with a tenth communists.

So many college teachers joined that they formed their own New York City College Teachers Union Local 537 AFT.

Dorothy Wallace joined the TU as "minder" for the Soviets, under her brother, vice president Dale Zysman (Party name "Jack Hardy") who had trained in Moscow.

Henry Linville and Abraham Lefkowitz split from the TU to form the New York City Teacher Guild.

In 1938, she resigned to become a full-time activist for the New York City Teachers Union (TU).

Dodd joined an "Anti-Fascist Literature Committee."

She was attracted to the Communist Party by Margaret Schlauch: "The Communist Party in this country set itself up as the one organization that was fighting fascism."

Harriet Silverman introduced her to U.S. Communist Party leader Earl Browder.

Teachers urged her to attend a "Class Room Teachers Association," through which she learned of the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) and the Teachers Union (TU).

She saw Celia Lewis, Clara Richer, and Max Diamond emerge as leaders of the TU's "Red minority."

By 1938, Dodd resigned from Hunter College and took a full-time position in the pro-communist TU, and moved her family to Poughkeepsie to ease access to state legislators in Albany.

In 1939, the Hitler-Stalin Pact undermined the TU's public position, and the Rapp-Coudert Committee started its anti-communist investigations, subpoenaing more than 600 teachers suspected of Pro-Soviet sympathies.

Dodd secretly burned a list of TU members in her possession.

In 1940, her husband left her over political differences.

They had no children.

By 1940, opposition to the TU had gathered: Linville and Lefkowitz rallied George Googe and other anti-communists from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and individuals including George Counts and John Childs of Teachers College, George Axtelle, Lovestoneites led by Ben Davidson, and teachers from Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington.

The Party formed a "Committee to Defend the Public Schools" and Dodd headed a "Women's Trade Union Committee for Peace."

By that time, Dodd worked for NY Teacher's Union (TU) and the American Labor Party, but also secretly for the Communist Party.

City College of New York expelled 50 teachers, including Morris U. Schappes.

Bella Dodd (née Visono; 1904 – 29 April 1969 ) was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist, member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) and New York City Teachers Union (TU) in the 1930s and 1940s ("one of Communism's most strident voices"), and vocal anti-communist after she had a big conversion after meeting Fulton J. Sheen, Bishop of Rochester, New York.