Americans for Democratic Action
political organization
Americans for Democratic Action, Inc. (ADA) is a liberal American political organization advocating progressive policies. ADA views itself as supporting social and economic justice through lobbying, grassroots organizing, research, and supporting progressive candidates.
History
Formation
The ADA grew out of a predecessor group, the Union for Democratic Action (UDA). The UDA was formed by former members of the Socialist Party of America and the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies as well as labor union leaders, liberal politicians, theologians, and others who were opposed to the pacifism adopted by most left-wing political organizations in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It supported an interventionist, internationalist foreign policy and a pro-union, liberal domestic policy. It was also strongly anti-communist. It undertook a major effort to support left-wing Democratic members of Congress in 1946, but this effort was an overwhelming failure.
James Isaac Loeb – later an ambassador and diplomat in the John F. Kennedy administration – the UDA's executive director, advocated disbanding the UDA and forming a new, more broadly based, mass-membership organization. The ADA was formed on January 3, 1947, and the UDA shuttered.
“Americans for Democratic Action” enters the record as political organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Americans, Democratic and Action can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4745611. VIAF identifies the subject as 128543510. The Library of Congress control number is n81125979. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946 and 1947.
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This entry incorporates text from “Americans for Democratic Action” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.