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.
[6] 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.
[7] The organization was widely quoted; its members often held influential positions in the presidential administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and it strongly supported the Lend-Lease arms supply program.
[8] In 1945, the UDA distributed 1 million copies of a cartoon pamphlet in support of the Dumbarton Oaks proposals for an international organization that would become the United Nations.
[7][12][13] The defeat of a large number of Democrats in the 1946 elections prompted Loeb to advocate UDA's disbanding and the formation of a new, more broadly based, mass-membership organization.