DODD, FREDERICA CHASE (ca. 1892-1972). Frederica Dodd, black teacher and social worker, was born in 1892 and lived most of her life in Dallas. After graduating in 1910 from what later became Booker T. Washington High School, she attended Howard University. With twenty-one other young women, she organized Delta Sigma Theta sorority there in 1913. When she returned to Dallas after earning her degree in 1914, she taught for a year at her old high school. After marrying physician John H. Dodd on June 10, 1920, she had to give up the post. She began her career in social work with the Dallas Family Bureau, or United Charities. Frederica Dodd was a leader in a successful effort to establish a YWCA branch for blacks. The organization, initially an after-school group for girls, expanded into the Maria Morgan Branch. She helped to organize a Dallas Alumnae chapter of Delta Sigma Theta and belonged to the Priscilla Art Club. She died on January 21, 1972, in Dallas County.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Paula Giddings, In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement (New York: Morrow, 1988). Julia K. Gibson Jordan and Charlie Mae Brown Smith, Beauty and the Best: Frederica Chase Dodd, The Story of a Life of Love and Dedication (Dallas: Dallas Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, 1985).

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