Union for Democratic Action

The Union for Democratic Action (UDA) was an American political organization advocating liberal policies and the preservation and extension of democratic values domestically and overseas. It existed from 1941 to 1947, and was the precursor organization to the group Americans for Democratic Action.

The Union for Democratic Action was co-founded by liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (then a member of the Socialist Party of America), James I. Loeb (later an ambassador and diplomat in the John F. Kennedy administration), International Ladies Garment Workers Union official Murray Gross, actor Melvyn Douglas, and others at the Town Hall Club in New York City on May 10, 1941. The impetus for the formation of the UDA was the pacifism advocated by the Socialist Party, which many socialist intellectuals and left-wing activists felt was inappropriate given the threat to western democratic nations posed by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Other leaders and members of the UDA came out of William Allen White's Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, which was becoming increasingly conservative. The organization was explicitly pro-union, and barred political conservatives from membership. The organization also explicitly barred communists from membership as well.

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