In 1961 he was appointed as United States Secretary of Commerce under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, serving until 1965.

[1] He returned to North Carolina and served as chairman of Research Triangle Park, a major facility established during his tenure as governor.

Hodges left for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at age 17, where he was a member of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, and moved back to Eden after graduation.

In the 1940s, he gained gubernatorial appointments to the state Board of Education and the Highway and Public Works Commission.

Because North Carolina had a one-term limit for governors at that time, Hodges had the longest continuous tenure in the office until the state constitution was changed and Jim Hunt was elected to a second term in 1980.

[5] He helped gain support for the establishment of Research Triangle Park, intended to attract innovation and industry to the North Carolina Piedmont, and to strengthen connections among the three universities involved.

A range of activists, civil rights organizations, Eleanor Roosevelt and President Eisenhower, in addition to the international press, pressured Hodges for clemency.