William Howard Melish

In 1971, Melish again became chairman of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship until 1978.

In 1969, Melish became rector of Grace Episcopal Church Complex (Queens) for a decade until he retired in 1979. He then returned to his Brooklyn church as an assisting priest until he died.

In 1963, Melish delivered an address at the memorial for W.E.B. DuBois.

US Senator Joseph McCarthy investigated Melish as chairman of the council. In 1957, Bishop James P. DeWolfe of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island closed the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn in 1957 and ousted Melish, who had taken over from his father in 1949. The bishop closed the church until a new congregation claimed it as "St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church."

The rector, church wardens, and vestrymen of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn sued Melish and his father to leave; they refused. On June 24, 1957, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, Second Department, found in favor of the church. On March 26, 1958, the Supreme Court of Kings County, New York, heard Rector, Holy Trinity v. Melish. Hubbell and Davies represented the plaintiffs; Raphael H. Weissman and Hubert T. Delaney represented Melish. The supreme court found in favor of the plaintiffs. The case received press coverage, including Life magazine.

Melish advocated civil rights. He also advocated peaceful co-existence with the USSR, which in July 1948 formed part of the foreign plank of the platform of the Progressive Party (United States, 1948).

Mr. Melish's chairmanship (1947–1951) of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship led both him and his father into a "bitter struggle" in the 1940s and 1950s that divided their parish as the council wound up on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations in December 1947. Melish immediately and publicly opposed the list, telling the New York Times that:

In the 1940s, Melish joined the American Labor Party (then, affiliated with the Communist Party USA). Melish was also a founding member of the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, as well as the editor for the council's biweekly publication, Reporter (CPUSA) (an English-language press of the Communist Party USA publication).

In 1935, Melish began his ministry at Christ Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1938, he joined his father as assistant rector at the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. Melish served as assistant rector from 1938 to 1958; his father was rector there from 1904 until his ouster in 1949.

The Reverend William Howard Melish (11 May 1910 – 15 June 1986) was an 20th-century American Episcopalian and social leader, driven from his Brooklyn church in the 1950s during McCarthyism in a decade-long controversy by the Episcopalian bishop of Long Island due to his association with the USSR and CPUSA.

William Howard Melish was born on May 11, 1910, in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Dr. John Howard Melish and Marguerite McComas. He studied at Harvard University and then studied for the priesthood at Jesus College, Cambridge, and at the Episcopal Theological School.