Robert Morss Lovett

Robert Morss Lovett (December 25, 1870 – February 8, 1956) was an American academic, writer, editor, political activist, and government official.

[1] As Government Secretary of the Virgin Islands in 1939-43, Lovett served as acting Governor from December 14, 1940 until February 3, 1941.

In 1943, the Dies Committee charged him as a communist subversive, over his association with left-wing individuals and groups; through an enactment passed by both houses of Congress, he was forced out of the Secretary position and barred from federal employment.

Lovett, who denied he was a Communist, challenged this action through the courts as an unconstitutional bill of attainder, and though he did not get the job back, he won a 1946 decision from the Supreme Court (United States v. Lovett), and received back pay.

Lovett spent many years living at Hull House, where his wife Isa Mott Smith was aide to Jane Addams.