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The progressive dilemma: grassroots liberals, the Democratic Party, and the search for political power in mid-twentieth century America

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The progressive dilemma: grassroots liberals, the Democratic Party, and the search for political power in mid-twentieth century America

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Content i

THE PROGRESSIVE DILEMMA:

GRASSROOTS LIBERALS, THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, AND THE SEARCH FOR

POLITICAL POWER IN MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICA

by

David Perry Levitus

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)

December 2013

Copyright 2013 David Perry Levitus
ii

DEDICATION

For my parents and grandparents—

you have given me a history of which to be proud

and the tools to succeed in writing my own story.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been thinking about writing these acknowledgements for a very long time.
Even before I began graduate school, I knew I had already accumulated significant debts
to the many people who had supported and guided me. Growing up, I was always very
good at digesting and articulating whatever was the received wisdom in school but a part
of me always wondered, “how did we know that?” There was never really time to
investigate, but I never let go of that instinct to keep asking questions and searching out
better answers. It was only when I got to college and then especially in graduate school,
with the writing of my dissertation, where I got to truly start asking questions that
mattered to me personally and begin figuring out the answers for myself.
And for that relentless drive, I have to thanks my parents, first and foremost. Like
many young children, I had endless questions about the world, but to their eternal credit,
my parents treated this torrent of queries as something worthy of celebration and reply,
not a tiring distraction.
My mom has to be one of the most patient, loving people I know and she
encouraged my imagination wherever it might lead me. No idea, whether designing solar-
powered cars or creating my own island-state, à la Swiss Family Robinson, seemed too
fantastical for her. She listened patiently, asked questions and smiled and laughed a lot.
And whether it was writing down my thoughts when I couldn’t find the words to express
them on paper or finding whatever craft supplies I could use for my silly projects. And
since I grew up and became able to fend for myself, she never stopped believing in me
iv
and making it clear that if I ever needed anything, she would be there. There is nothing a
human being needs more than that kind of security. I am very lucky indeed to have had it,
without one iota of doubt or reservation.
My dad has never stopped encouraging me to take my thinking to the next step.
Even if it drove me crazy at times, he always had another question, an angle I hadn’t
considered, another perspective to explore. As a scientist, his skepticism and commitment
to always taking the evidence into account shaped my mind to its core. Taking ideas on
blind faith was never an option. There was always more to be learned and he encouraged
me to seek out new knowledge on my own. Often when I would ask what a word meant,
he would say “Look it up!” It would have been easy enough for him to tell me, but he
pushed me to take the initiative and do my own work to find answers. He was never the
last word of authority, even if he always had one more question. And his example of
scientific achievement and of making important new findings about the world in the face
of skepticism, naysayers, and the mindless maze of bureaucracy and politics has always
inspired me to push myself further. His lack of tolerance for bullshit, whether in
scholarship or in the practical business of getting things done, has impressed itself on
everything that I do. Thank you for keeping me honest and earnest.
My grandparents’ tremendous compassion and humanity have left a lasting
influence on me and on all of my work. I’ve been lucky enough to enough to spend
decades with them and their homes were always places of great warmth and comfort for
me. They not only raised my parents—they infused their values directly into my
upbringing. Only when I was working on my dissertation did I realize how Arnold and
v
Pearl Gould of Lido Beach, NY and Paul and Yetta Levitus of Spring Valley, NY were
parts of the story I sought to recount and explain in my scholarly work. From Arnold and
Paul’s work in the garment industry to Pearl’s experience in the milieu of the Film and
Photo League to the Arnold and Pearl’s service as public school teachers, therapists and
leading advocates for the mentally ill, I feel fortunate to have appreciated their place in
history and in my own life simultaneously. They all, along with my great uncle Bruce and
great Aunt Karolyn—leaders of the New York Reform Democratic club movement and
tireless advocates of decent housing and basic services—have given me indelible
examples of what it means to be public leaders who care most about fairness and doing
what’s right, not self-aggrandizement and ego gratification.
My brother Steven has been my friend since the day he was born and I can’t
imagine having grown up without him. Some things only siblings can understand and I
am lucky to have shared so many floor-slapping, gasping-for-air laugh attacks with him
and all kinds of conversations about making our way in the world.
I am also grateful to all the friends who amused, supported, and challenged me
over the years, from the Derwood kids to the JC to the NYU College Democrats and a
whole crazy mess of friends in Los Angeles and scattered across the country. To Darren
Morris, Rachel Torrey, Jeff and Becca Marx, Aaron Barnett, Josh Rosenbloom, Brian
Wolly, Lauren Jones, Shaun McElhenny, Ben Goldberg, Shawna Meehan, Amy Pivak,
Alex Hu, Thais-Lyn Trayer, Rachel Landis, Dan Taub and Ravina Daphtary, thank you.
My regular phone conversations with Darren kept me laughing and Ravina provided
vi
reassurance, commiseration, and sage advice from wherever in the country she happened
to be living
In Aaron Barnett, I could not ask for a better friend. We have lived in different
cities for a dozen years and as much as I miss the easy camaraderie and incessant laughs,
I cannot express how much I value our friendship. There is no one whom I can trust and
rely upon more. I am so grateful for the kind of totally open, honest communication we
have about what it means to be men coming of age in society that doesn’t always have
the most sensible ways of presenting masculinity (although I don’t think we have ever
once put it in such abstract academic terms!)
My history and social studies teachers at Richard Montgomery High School, Mr.
Hines and Mr. Early, as well as Mr. Baron and Mr. Evans, were exceptional and stoked
my growing interest in the connections between the past and the present. At NYU,
Professor Paul Mattingly took an interest in a freshman struggling to figure out his
perspective on the world, showing me a new way of understanding history and the
present, and encouraging me to pursue to my talents. From his American Social
Institutions course in my first semester of college to his public history grad course in
History and Public Policy to my honors thesis and my decision to apply to Ph.D.
programs, Mattingly’s support put me on the path to thinking more deeply and clearly
about what it actually means to study the evolution of new ideas and new social
arrangements.
Graduate school in Los Angeles always seemed to me initially so far from the
hubbub of academic conference and debate along the Eastern Shoreboard, but I found a
vii
remarkable group of thoughtful, inquisitive intellects here and I am very grateful for all
the stimulation they gave me along this long road from coursework through exams to
dissertation completion. My fellow frequenters of our TA space in the Shrine—Jeff
Kosiorek, Barbara, Soliz, Andrew Fogleman, Stacy Lutkoski, Dylan Ellefson, Michael
Block, Go Oyagi, Yuko Konno, Gerardo Licon, Jillian Medeiros, Alex Aviña and Phuong
Nguyen—helped create a home away from home on USC’s often sparse campus life for a
couple critical years of my life.
The “theory group” Andrew Fogleman and I organized definitely delayed our
progress on the standard materials of our field—medieval Europe and U.S.
respectively—but we gained so much by the unbridled exploration of ideas, untainted by
dogma or orthodoxy of any kind. A scholar and a humanist in the best sense, Andrew was
an unparalleled intellectual sparring partner as much for his feints and devil’s advocacy
as his occasional reveals of his intellectual convictions and Christian reverence.
My conversations with Nicholas Dahmann on the fundamentals of cities, politics,
geography, and critical theory were invaluable. Discussions with Matt Amato kept me
thinking broadly about culture, despite my urge to make everything about institutions,
politics, and social forces! Curtis Fletcher became a bit like my grad school sibling; our
wide ranging discussions of intellectual and cultural history was matched by the absolute
necessity to share notes and commiserate over the challenges of getting the dissertation
done. Max Baumgarten came across my path late in the game, but became a vital partner
for thinking about the meaning of the politics and social space of late 20
th
century Los
Angeles.
viii
My co-conspirator of the revived L.A. History Group, Becky Nicolaides, along
with our accomplices Genevieve Carpio and Lily Geismer, created an invaluable forum
for discussion of new approaches to studying cities and suburbs, and every month left me
with a feeling of real accomplishment that we were moving the field forward nationally
from our place in Southern California. Becky kept me grounded when I developed some
of my more ambitious schemes for the group. No one had the common touch and talent
for public scholarship like Gena. And on every single issue from the nature of liberalism
to hipsters, gentrification, and social entrepreneurship, Lily and I thought just differently
enough to hone each others’ perspectives, asymptotically approaching the same view
from our respective “glass half-empty” and “glass half-full” positions. She has been
immensely helpful as I have navigated the literature of the field and the opportunities for
academic advancement over the last three years.
The same goes for Katherine Unterman and Daniel Amsterdam, both just a couple
years ahead of me in the race through grad school. Beginning with our carpools to the
Huntington Library, Kate was a constant source of discussion and encouragement as I
sought to figure out my place in the academic universe. Dan, whom I met at my first
academic conference in 2006, also proved a vital colleague with whom to discuss trends
in our subfield and to partner with on panels and all kinds of endeavors.
In addition, I benefitted from conversations with Rocio Rosales and Anthony
Alvarez of the UCLA Sociology Ph.D. program, with Andrew Radin, and with a variety
of other individuals from History and American Studies at USC: Jessica Kim, Sarah
Keyes, Jason LaBau, Max Felker-Kantor, Mark Padoongpatt, Hilary Jenks, Michan
ix
Connor, Emily Hobson and more. Plus, Kenny, David Kurtz, Michelle Samani, and
Donna Dishbak of Insomnia Café: “a dissertation is not a dinner party.”
On panels, at conferences, and through random meetings in archives, I received
important feedback and ideas from Matt Lassiter, Elizabeth Sanders, Richardson
Dilworth, Russ Kazal, Ken Burt, Tony Michaels, Marilyn Young, Ira Katznelson, Joe
Crespino, Doug Rossinow. Mark Wild, Greg Hise, and Mark Clapson.
Phil Ethington has been my advisor these last eight years through thick and thin.
This dissertation is my own distinct creation but it would never have been written without
his tutelage and incessant questioning. By turns stimulating and exasperating, Phil never
failed to push me to think big, to ask hard questions, and to consider the unexamined
assumptions laced throughout my work. To the extent I have broken any new conceptual
ground, it is because he never settled for my first or second-attempt answers but pushed
me to articulate fully what I tentatively sensed and to ground it in rigorous evidence and
argument. From the moment I gave him my undergrad thesis on urban renewal in Newark
and he returned it with marching orders to read five different books on the theory of
urban politics, he has broadened my academic and intellectual horizons so far that I
cannot help but have the ability to explain why I am approaching any given issue with a
certain lens. With another advisor, I might have completed my dissertation sooner but the
breadth and depth of my knowledge would surely have been far more cursory.
A variety of professors and my committee members at USC have also contributed
significantly to the development of my thinking. Carole Shammas introduced me to pre-
Civil War history and a rigorous approach to thinking about causation and quantification
x
in history. Steve Ross kicked off my study of popular culture and social history, while
Richard Fox guided my exploration of the field of American intellectual history’s many
winding currents over the last century. Bill Deverell opened new doors to scholarly
archives and grounded me in the imperative to follow the primary sources. At a critical
moment, Robin D. G. Kelley reminded me of the importance of making the dissertation
about the questions I wanted to answer and not the need to respond to this or that
historiographical gap. It gave me the fortitude to ask the questions I thought mattered
most, regardless of what scholars before me had been concerned, Kelley included.
George Sanchez probably doesn't realize the kind of impact he’s had on my development,
but auditing his courses on Civic Engagement and Public Scholarship, as well as on
Latino/Chicano History honed my perspective on those subjects and gave me the
confidence to eloquently confront politically correct shibboleths from the academic left,
right and center. Even when we disagree, I admire the independence of his thinking and
his relentless commitment to engaging the wider public in telling and making of history.
His comments at my prospectus and dissertation defenses were invaluable. Jeb Barnes
was unfailingly supportive of me even as I deviated from the premises of his political
science methodology. Without exception, I always left meetings with him feeling more
confident in my ability to complete the dissertation and to say something that mattered.
As much as I would like it to be so, conversation and intellectual stimulation
alone do not enable the completion of a dissertation. Along the way, I benefitted from the
financial support of myriad institutions beginning with the USC Graduate School, which
gave me a generous five-year package of support, including a first and fifth year of
xi
fellowship. A one-year John Randolph and Dora Haynes Foundation Doctoral
Dissertation Fellowship presented me with the time to research, write, and reflect on the
great conceptual puzzle I had set for myself. Short-term fellowships from New York
Public Library, NYU Center for the United States and the Cold War, Roosevelt
Institute/FDR Library, Truman Presidential Library Foundation, combined with tuition
remission from the USC History Department allowed me to spend another much-needed
semester doing research in New York. During three long hot dissertation summers, two
research grants from the Historical Society of Southern California, a Hubbard fellowship
from the USC History Department, and a USC-Huntington Library Institute on California
and the West travel Grant enabled me to sustain myself (even graduate students have to
eat and pay rent!) and to travel to the Bancroft Library, California State Archives, and
Stanford Special Collections. Early on in graduate school, I was fortunate to have support
for several summers by working as a research assistant for Phil Ethington on his Ghost
Metropolis opus, the “Placing APD” book chapter we co-wrote, and the HyperCities
project and the “Transnational Urbanism in the Americas” special issue of Urban
History. The experience of co-writing a book chapter together my third year was one of
the major highlights of grad school and I was lucky to get compensated financially in the
process. Success always tastes better with a little extra food on the table.
Like nearly all historians, I owe a debt of gratitude to the archivists and librarians
who answered all kinds of strange questions, fetched hundreds of boxes in rapid
succession, and occasionally accommodated special requests for assistance in obtaining
and reproducing primary source materials. I was especially impressed by the public
xii
servants of the California State Archives and the Wisconsin Historical Society for their
cheerful assistance. Many individuals at the Southern California Library for Social
Studies and Research, the UCLA Special Collections, the Bancroft Library, the Stanford
Special Collections, the New York Public Library, the Columbia University Special
Collections, NYU Tamiment Library, the FDR Presidential Library, and the University of
Iowa were also incredibly helpful.
And the staff of the History Department, Lori Rogers, La Verne Hughes, and
Sandra Hopwood, were a constant friendly and helpful presence. Working with my
students at USC taught me how to teach and gave me a new appreciation of how to meet
everybody “where they are at,” intellectually and personally.
This dissertation is not separable from my regular participation in a local
community devoted to social justice, at Progressive Jewish Alliance, IKAR and beyond.
Nothing has kept me as sane as my involvement in the day-to-day work of creating a
more decent society, with love, fairness, and opportunity for all. What I learned in my
dissertation drove my work as a volunteer leader and what I learned in the work of
movement building, pushed me to turn from an analysis of policy to understanding of the
building of power and the creation of institutions that would matter for the long haul.
More importantly, the community sustained me when the isolation and despair of a blank
page and barely completed dissertation haunted me.
I am especially grateful to Daniel Sokatch and Rabbi Sharon Brous who provided
contemporary role models of leadership for social justice in a complicated world, where
the “good guys” and “bad guys” are far from always obvious, if they ever were. Equally
xiii
important, I was fortunate to participate in an extraordinary fellowship cohort which
began relationships that persisted and sustained me through today. In particular, the
friendship of Cory Fischer, Josh Feldman, Maya Paley, Leah Weiner, Ashley Englander
and many others has been a great gift. Cory never stopped supporting me during some
personally tough times with a taste of regularity, our search for the best hamburger in LA,
and he never ceased asking me when I was going to buck up and get that dissertation
done. A special nod to Maya Barron and her indomitable historian parents Kathy
Kobayashi and Hal Barron, who opened up their home to me from my initial miserable
moment in L.A. and have been great sources of strength.
My fellow EJWG members, Dan Cardozo, Justin Pearlman, Laureen Lazarovichi,
Lee Winkleman, Helen Katz, and Scott Einbinder demonstrated the meaning of
grassroots commitment. I am especially grateful to Scott, perhaps the most patient man in
the world, without whose leadership I would not have developed into the kind of leader
and the kind of professional that I am today. I am eternally in his debt for the many hours
of phone conversation, both before and during tenure as the interim Los Angeles director
of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, for his ability to listen without fail to
the worries and complaints of me and others and to provide just the right kind of advice.
He is a treasure and it has my great good fortune to have collaborated with him so
extensively. I have also been fortunate to work with Regional Council members like Nick
Karno, Ilanna Bavli, Marc Bauer, Marcy Kaplan, Marsha Novak, Susan Blumenfield, and
Lois Oppenheim.
xiv
Good people like Piper Kamins, Janet Kramer and many others kept things fun
and interesting along the way. Amy Martin kept me company in coffeeshops as she
slogged through law school. Co-workers at Bend the Arc like Pam Hope, Susan Lubeck,
and Elana Kogan were supportive in good times and bad, as I wrapped up my work on
this dissertation amid the pressures of a full time job.
Barbara Soliz and I have been through a heck of a lot together these last few
years. We commiserated over grad school, shared a lot of laughs, embarked on new
adventures from the local concert hall to work/fun trips across California, and comforted
each other in moments of loss, sadness and pain. I cannot say how much it overjoys me
that we simultaneously completed our Ph.D.’s and walked together across the
Commencement Stage. For all your love and support, I am forever grateful.
xv
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication ii

Acknowledgements iii

Abstract xvi

Introduction 1

Chapter One: “Independent” Progressive Committees for Roosevelt
and the Failure to Organize for the Long Term, 1932 – 1940 56

Chapter Two: The National Citizens Political Action Committee and the
Making of White-Collar Movement to Expand the New Deal, 1943-1947 101

Chapter Three: Organizing in an Era of Mass Culture: The Origins of Hollywood
Liberalism and the Rise of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee 147

Chapter Four: The Hollywood Democratic Committee
and the Challenge of Scale, 1942-1947 192

Conclusion 272

List of Primary Sources 282

Bibliography 285

xvi
ABSTRACT

This dissertation offers a new interpretation of the tangled history of American
progressivism and liberalism through a study of a series of crucial yet overlooked
organizations that worked during the 1930s and 1940s to create a left-leaning electoral
and lobbying infrastructure: the National Progressive League (1932), the Progressive
National Committee (1936), the National Committee of Independent Voters for
Roosevelt (1940), the National Citizens Political Action Committee (1943-1946), the
Motion Picture Democratic Committee (1937-1939), Hollywood for Roosevelt (1940)
and the Hollywood Democratic Committee (1943-1947). The stories of these groups
constitute a key phase in the longer history of liberals experimenting with strategies for
building power within the American political system. The tensions within these groups
epitomized the confused positioning of progressives in relation to the American political
system, and to the Democratic Party, in particular, as the primary vehicle for their
ambitions. Internal debates over which approaches, tactics, and organizational structures
were most effective occurred regularly and yet broke along unpredictable lines—not
merely between Communists and non-Communists, or between “liberals” and the “left.”
While the divide over Communism and anti-Communism did fissure “Popular
Front”-era liberalism by the late 1940s, the groups’ challenges were not reducible to Cold
War fractures, social group divisions, or putative ideological differences between more
centrist “liberals” and more left-wing “progressives.” In fact, this dissertation argues,
contrary to much historiography, that there was almost no distinction between “liberals”
xvii
and “progressives” until the early years of the Cold War, when a clear demarcation
emerged. By the early 1930s, “liberal” and “progressive” had become nearly synonymous
labels, defined by support for economic regulation, social welfare measures, and workers’
rights.
The lack of coherent and autonomous vehicle for advancing their own vision, and
not self-inflicted liberal retreat from more truly progressive, radical, or left-wing
principles, the dissertation contends, is one of the best explanations for the paradoxical
strength and weakness of mid-20
th
century American liberals. Liberalism was a “fragile
giant” which bore the marks of its breach birth into American politics. Liberal ideas
emerged prior to the formation of a political home for their ambitions. The country’s
messy patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments limited liberals’ ability to
create an overarching, national political vehicle. They were overly dependent on the
popularity and unifying power of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a singular figure who
consistently undermined rather than encouraged the development of a durable power
center on his left flank. And liberals’ own aversion to partisan politics and their wider
beliefs about how to achieve social and political progress—both inherited from their
Progressive-era predecessors—undermined their quest for power.
The implicit “theories of change” embedded in their ideologies—the cultural
frames that guided and structured their decision-making processes—owed a great debt to
more widespread, yet deeply problematic tropes in mainstream and left-wing American
political culture. For instance, a “the people versus the interests” model of political
process passed down from early 20
th
century progressives to those who struggled against
xviii
the Cold War itself. The decision to break away from the Democratic Party and form the
Progressive Party in 1948 owed a great deal to the logic valorizing “the American
people” as an essentially virtuous and wise group who would vote and act in progressive
ways if only they had the right vehicle and heard the right message, free from the
shackles of the two major parties.
As these grassroots liberals searched for power, both within and outside the
Democratic Party, they encountered the contradictions of the New Deal Democratic order
head on. This political order may have been a “fragile giant,” but it was one with a
beating heart, a strong animating grassroots impulse all its own. The breadth and depth
what groups like the National Citizens Political Action Commitee and the Hollywood
Democratic Committee accomplished in a few short years was remarkable. Their work
showed what was possible in a Janus-faced period, looking back to the New Deal and
World War II and anticipating the progressive politics that would accompany the major
shifts in American society toward international political-economic preeminence and
toward a suburban, TV-centered lifestyle and landscape.
The dissertation begins by chronicling the national “independent” “progressive”
“citizens” committees for Roosevelt’s election that emerged in 1932, 1936, and 1940.
The second chapter explores the significance of the National Citizens Political Action
Committee (NCPAC) that grew on the model of these committees, but became a longer-
lived umbrella organization for the liberal left from its initial base in the industrial union
movement. The third and fourth chapter analyze the line of electoral and lobbying
institutions that materialized at the intersection of the “Cultural Front” and the
xix
Democratic Party, from the Motion Picture Democratic Committee (MPDC) and the
Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC) to the Hollywood branch of the Independent
Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions (HICCASP). These chapters draw
on an array of organizational and personal archival collections housed at the New York
Public Library, the FDR Presidential Library, UCLA, the Bancroft Library, Columbia
University, the NYU Tamiment Library, the University of Iowa, the Wisconsin Historical
Society, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, and the
California State Archives.
1
INTRODUCTION

The story of the 1944 presidential election tells the tale of American progressives’
paradoxical strength and weakness in the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the “Popular
Front.” In 1942, U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace proclaimed the “Century of the
Common Man”—a profoundly progressive view of the U.S. and its place in the world,
and of how societies should seek to benefit the common good across lines of class, race,
and nation—to widespread acclaim (and intense disdain from conservatives). In the midst
of the Second World War, he explained that
when the time of peace comes, the citizen will again have a duty, the
supreme duty of sacrificing the lesser interest for the greater interest of the
general welfare. Those who write the peace must think of the whole world.
There can be no privileged peoples. We ourselves in the United States are
no more a master race than the Nazis. And we can not perpetuate
economic warfare without planting the seeds of military warfare. We must
use our power at the peace table to build an economic peace that is just,
charitable and enduring.
1

Shortly before, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed the Atlantic
Charter, which numbered the self-determination of all world’s peoples and the imperative
of international cooperation to secure “improved labor standards, economic advancement

11
Delivered on May 8, 1942 to a gathering of the Free World Association in New York City, the speech
was soon issued in book and it became a best-seller: Henry A. Wallace, The Century of the Common Man
(New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1943).
2
and social security” among the ultimate objectives of the war against the Axis Powers.
2

Then, in 1944, FDR campaigned on an economic “Second Bill of Rights”—the boldest
liberal proposal since the U.S. had entered World War II—which sought supplement vital
political and civil rights with social ones. The president proclaimed the imperative for “a
useful and remunerative job, …adequate food and clothing and recreation, …a decent
home, adequate medical care, …a good education,” protection from economic insecurity,
and freedom from monopolies and unfair competition. “After this war is won,” FDR
declared, “we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights,
to new goals of human happiness and well-being.”
3

Yet by the fall of 1944, Wallace was gone from FDR’s presidential ticket, despite
a public poll showing support from two-thirds of registered Democrats for his return and
the backing of the strongest institutions on the left—the industrial unions of the CIO.
4
At
the apparent apex of the New Deal’s social democratic and international aspirations,

2
For the circumstances and substance of the Atlantic Charter, see Elizabeth Bogwardt, A New Deal for the
World: America’s Vision for Human Rights (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 1-5, 20-56. The
Atlantic Charter was not a formal, legal document; it was a statement issued as a joint declaration on 14
August 1941 by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. For the
variety of perspectives and forces at play in shaping of the post-war world, see both Mark L. Kleinman, A
World of Hope A World of Fear: Henry A. Wallace, Reinhold Niebuhr, and American Liberalism
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000); Frank A. Warren, Noble Abstractions: American Liberal
Intellectuals and World War II (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999); Nikhil Pal Singh,
“Culture/Wars: Recoding Empire in an Age of Democracy,” American Quarterly 50 no. 3 (September
1998): 471-522.
3
The notion of a “Second Bill of Rights” originated in FDR’s State of the Union Message to Congress, 11
January 1944, which was broadcast over the radio to the whole country. It was reprinted in Samuel
Rosenman, ed., The Public Papers & Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vol. XIII (New York: Harper
Press, 1950), 40-42.
4
C. B. Baldwin, Report on the 1944 Democratic Convention, Baldwin Papers, Box 5. Also, cited in Curtis
D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 3 vols. (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1965), I: 9.
3
conservative Democratic Party insiders had engineered Wallace’s ouster and the
substitution of Senator Harry S. Truman.
5

Liberals mustered remarkably little resistance, despite the popularity of Wallace
and many of his ambitious proposals. Liberals were at an automatic disadvantage to
urban Democratic machine leaders like the Bronx’s Ed Flynn and major Democratic
financiers such as California’s Edwin Pauley because of the undemocratic institutions by
which convention delegates were allocated and nominees were chosen, but their real
weakness was the lack of an autonomous, powerful political infrastructure. The CIO
labor federation and many of its constituent unions were the exceptions but alone they
were not broad or strong enough to shift the balance of power decisively toward the left.
Through the early 1940s, progressives in general had remained poorly organized, despite
a decade of FDR’s remarkable popularity, the existence of many local and state “New
Deals,” and the transformation of millions of Americans’ understanding of the
relationship between government, business, and their own lives.
6
In large part,
progressives’ difficulty was a matter of organization, not popularity.

5
For a cautionary note about the political weaknesses of New Deal aspirations by the middle of World War
II, see Robert Westbrook, “A Nice WPA Job,” Dissent 53 no. 3 (Summer 2006): 124-127.
6
On the FDR’s personal reach, see Lawrence W. Levine and Cordelia Levine, The People and the
President: America's Extraordinary Conversation with FDR (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). On local and
state New Deals, see Mason B. Williams, City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern
New York (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013); Robert E. Burke, Olson’s New Deal for California (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1953); Bernard Sternsher, ed., Hope Restored: How the New Deal Worked
in Town and Country (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999). On the remaking of conceptions of American identity
and the social contract, see Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-
1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); George J. Sánchez, Becoming Mexican American:
Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993); Gary Gerstle, Working-Class Americanism: The Politics of Labor in a Textile City, 1914-1960 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
4
Fast forward to 2011 and liberals were once again up in arms, frustrated at a
Democratic President who emphasized policy accomplishments over party building and
who abandoned his own grassroots infrastructure and suppressed liberal groups’
advocacy efforts to the left of his own positions, from health care and financial regulation
to civil liberties and beyond. Once again, progressives had not been primarily responsible
for electing the president. They held little power and were easily sidelined, with many
accepting their fate and hoping for the best from the man in whom they placed great faith
and invested with much of their hopes for America’s economic and spiritual recovery.
7

The Problem of Liberalism’s Fragility
Often, the era between FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society appears as a
lost Golden Age, American liberalism’s “Garden of Eden.” Liberalism then was a
“fighting faith.”
8
FDR turned traitor to his class to challenge Wall Street bankers; LBJ
faced down his fellow white Southerners to enact Civil Rights legislation. And the
Democratic Party stood for the common man, so the story goes, at least outside of those
brutish Southern Democrats. From Paul Wellstone to Howard Dean, the “netroots” and
beyond, left-leaning liberal activists proclaim their allegiance to the “Democratic wing of

7
Jane Hamser, “White House May be Dictating, But We’re Not Stenographers,” 8 April 2009, firedoglake
(blog), http://firedoglake.com/2009/04/08/white-house-may-be-dictating-message-but-not-to-us/; Jonathan
Martin, “Rahm Emanuel warns liberal groups to stop ads,” 6 August 2009, POLITICO,
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25900.html; Adam Nagourney, “Debate Shows Obama Plays
by Washington’s Rules,” 26 December 2009, The New York Times, A14; Peter Wallsten, 26 January 2010,
“Chief of Staff Draws Fire From Left as Obama Falters,” The Wall Street Journal.
8
Kevin Mattson, When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Liberalism in Post-War America (New
York: Routledge, 2004)
5
the Democratic Party” against the relentless centrism of “Blue Dogs” and “New
Democrats” alike. During his 2008 campaign, Barack Obama succeeded in winning
adoration across these Democratic divides, but the business of governing only showed
how wide they remained, even as ultra conservative Republican opposition grew to epic
proportions.
9

But such divisions and struggles are not new. In fact, the supposedly halcyon days
of the “New Deal order,” stretching from the 1930s through the 1970s, witnessed fierce
struggles by grassroots activists to wrest control of the Democratic Party from illiberal
forces in the great metropolises of the North and West, even as chasms over strategy and
tactics, geopolitical alignments, and segregation by class and race slowed and fractured
their progress.
10
The selection of George McGovern as the Democratic presidential
nominee in 1972 represented the apex of grassroots liberal power within the Democratic
Party.
11
Forty years of struggle culminated in a Pyrrhic victory, where the grassroots
liberal candidate of choice was defeated in one of the greatest landslides in modern U.S.

9
For two of the premier examples of this Golden Era narrative, see Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a
Liberal (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007); and Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter of Kansas (New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 2004). Both vastly oversimplify the process of realignment and political
transformation.
10
On the Democratic club movements, which built on the legacy of previous Democratic reform efforts,
third party initiatives, and independent organizing efforts, see Suleiman Osman, The Invention of
Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011). for some of the New York story and Jonathan Bell, California Crucible
The Forging of Modern American Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) for
some of California story. For a comparative study, see David Levitus, “Democratic Club Movements in
Metropolitan America,” (unpublished manuscript).
11
See Bruce Miroff, The Liberals’ Moment: The McGovern Insurgency and the Identity Crisis of the
Democratic Party (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). The nomination of McGovern was
followed by grassroots liberals’ strong hand in writing the Democratic platforms in 1976 and 1978.
6
political history. Forty years of activism to transform the Democratic Party into a
progressive vehicle led to a seeming dead-end—the recalcitrance of the American voting
public, circa the 1970s and 1980s.
Liberals and sympathetic commentators have not wrestled with the implications
of this tangled history. Self-proclaimed centrists from the DLC and from the Blue Dog
caucus, former President Bill Clinton foremost among them, have never ceased to flag
these series of defeats as evidence of the need for a the Democratic Party to tack
rightward, whether on cultural, social, or economic issues.
12
But liberals generally don’t
like to acknowledge that the American voting public seems to have rejected their
candidates, even if polls show overwhelming support for maintaining many New Deal
and Great Society policies. It undermines the hoary common sense notion that “the
American people” know best.
To reckon with this problem requires a turn toward the era in which liberals first
gained power, a careful examination of the choices they faced at critical junctures, and
the cultural frames and institutional arrangements that structured those choices. It is
impossible to understand American liberals’ frustrated ambitions, and their vexed
relationship to the Democratic Party, the leadership of the president and the notion of
“the people,” without tracing how this state of affairs came to be. This is the subject of
the present study.

12
On the DLC and opposing views of how to revive the Democratic Party, see Robert Dreyfuss, “How the
DLC Does It,” The American Prospect, 19 December 2001; Adam Nagourney, “Centrist Democrats Warn
Party Not to Present Itself as ‘Far Left,’” 29 July 2003, New York Times; Michelle Goldberg, “The
Democrats’ brewing civil war,” 12 July 2003, Salon, http://www.salon.com/2003/07/12/democrats_45/;
Timothy Noah, “McGovern Redux,” 11 November 2007, New York Times, Sunday Book Review; L.R.
Runner, “How to Save the Democratic Party,” 24-31 December 2012, The Nation.
7
The truth, this study suggests, is that from the seminal years of the New Deal until
today, similar conundrums and tensions have bedeviled liberals’ relationship to the
political system. Always searching for political power but never secure in it, progressives
and commentators have proffered a variety of stories and explanations for their frustrated
ambitions.

Popular Explanations of Liberalism’s Limits
In the popular political discourse, explanations take the form of criticism,
exhortation and injunction. Liberals criticize the president for failing to use the bully
pulpit or to implement the most progressive administrative measures possible.
13
Some on
the left criticize grassroots liberals as “Obamabots,” content to follow the popular
Democratic president toward whatever unprogressive policies he pursues.
14
Other
commentators bemoan the lack of popular political knowledge and mobilization, the
overwhelming financial and economic interests set against Democrats, liberals and the
working-class, a biased corporate media, the distorted system of electoral representation,
or more rarely, the still vital streams of cultural conservatism and defenses of social
hierarchy that course through the American body politic.
15

13
Drew Westen, “What Happened to Obama?” 6 August 2011, The New York Times, Sunday Review.
14
Ben Smith and Emily Schultheis, “‘Obamabots’ defend POTUS in Twitterverse,” 18 October 2011,
Politico, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/66159.html; Bob Cesca, “Progressives, Obamabots
and a Realistic Evaluation of the President,” 19 January 2012, Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/progressives-obamabots-an_b_1215133.html; Michael
Tomasky, “A Word on ‘Obamabot’-ism,” 1 May 2013, The Daily Beast,
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/05/01/a-word-on-obamabot-ism.html.
15
Eric Alterman, Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama (New York: Nation Books, 2011).
8
The implicit assumption underlying so many of these perspectives is that “the
people” are an inherently progressive force, constrained from doing the right thing by a
constellation of moneyed and powerful special interests. Sometimes “the people” are old-
fashioned, white working-class Americans and Southerners, subjected to the economic
and cultural condescension of liberal elites.
16
For others, “the people” are those
historically oppressed by the rule of race, nation and empire.
17
For most, they are simply
the American people, en bloc, their virtue sui generis.
Even more variable in these critiques is the matter of which institution is the right
vehicle for mobilizing the good and virtuous people against the special interests. For
some, it’s the Democratic Party—for others, independent progressive groups or more
rarely, a third party. Opinions similarly vary on the extent to which mainstream
politicians will respond to organized advocacy from the left or will need to be voted out
of office and replaced those more authentically representative of “the people” or “the
movement.” Academic accounts of the success and failures of progressives, liberalism,
and the left in the U.S. are far more complicated and quite revealing in their own
respects.

16
Michael Lind, “Are liberals seceding from reality? The left is crazy to insult white Southerners as a
group” Salon, 11 August 2009, http://www.salon.com/2009/08/11/south_4/; Michael Lind, “Can Obama
give ‘em hell before it’s too late?” Salon, 1 September 2009,
http://www.salon.com/2009/09/01/demagogy/.
17
For an insightful history of these ideas, see Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the
Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
9
“Progressive” Scholarship and the Limits of Liberalism
Indeed, the last century of scholarship on American politics and power writ-large
has been an on-going conversation about the possibility of achieving progress, however
conceived. From the Progressive Era until the 1970s, progress was assumed and
liberalism taken for granted—with “the people,” variously defined, at the center of the
story. After that, scholarship took a turn toward the comparative and counterfactual—
posing questions about the how and why of liberalism’s limits and frustrations.
Scholarship between the 1910s and the 1940s featured a duel between Beardian
critiques of the moneyed interests which forged political settlements disadvantageous to
the people generally, on the one hand, and on the other, a study of the need for and
potential of centralized administration.
18
The post-WWII years witnessed Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr.’s paeans to the Democratic Party and its presidential administrations as
the uncomplicated tribunes and servants of the people and a complacent “consensus
history” faith in liberalism in the bedrock of the American experience and the New Deal
as its inevitable, culminating modernization for the industrial age, little conflict or even
political struggle required.
19
The next wave of “new social history” instead emphasized
those groups left out of “the people” and left behind by American liberalism. Mainstream
institutions, whether dominant political parties, administrative agencies, or the putatively

18
Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York: Knopf, 1968);
Barry D. Karl, Charles E. Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974).
Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1933).
19
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Roosevelt, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957-1960). For an
even more optimistic view, see Eric Goldman's popular Whiggish narrative, Rendezvous with Destiny: A
History of Modern American Reform (New York: 1952).
10
class-less, race-less notion of “the people” became hindrances, not handmaidens to
progress. Agency resided in distinct social groups, in the working class, women,
immigrants, and people of color. By the early 1990s, a more sophisticated wave of social
histories moved beyond ethnic separatism to consider on-the-ground intermingling of
different groups, especially under the influence of mass culture, but the emphasis
remained the meanings and agency of ordinary people.
20
Formal political institutions
played only auxiliary roles—significant for their role in social and cultural formation but
not as structures and instruments of power themselves.
21

There are two paradigmatic examples. Michael Denning, in The Cultural Front,
brilliantly describes the progressive cultural productions and tropes of the 1930s and
1940s, but because he elides the Popular Front’s co-optation to the U.S. New Deal and
Soviet Union, he is unable to explain the local and global political ramifications of
division, polarization, and repression after the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact and again after the
end of U.S.-U.S.S.R. alliance after the Second World War.
22
Likewise, Lizabeth Cohen’s
Making a New Deal, which explores “how it was possible and what it meant for industrial
workers to become effective as national political participants in the mid-1930s,” entirely
neglects local and national political institutions and leaves unanswered riddles like why
only 65% of Chicagoans who went to the polls voted for Roosevelt in 1936 while the

20
For a seminal work of “Ethnic Studies” that historicized ethnicity, nationality, and identity, see Sanchez,
Becoming Mexican American.
21
Theda Skocpol, Peter Evans and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., Bringing the State Back In (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1985).
22
Michael Rogin, Review of “The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth
Century” by Michael Denning, The Journal of American History 84, no. 2 (September 1997): 712-713.
11
Democratic mayoral candidate in 1935 had received 82% of the vote. In Cohen’s
account, shifts in political consciousness resulted from major “modernizing” social
transformations such as the expansion of mass culture institutions like film and chain
stores as well as the rise and fall of welfare capitalist schemes.
23

At the same time, however, some scholars from political science, sociology and
history pivoted away from contending moralistic narratives of progress, and the emphasis
on popular culture to begin asking how and why American formal political and policy
structures evolved in certain patterns and not others.
24
The effortless modernization of
liberalism had not come to America as predicted—grassroots upheaval, on the left, right
and center, particularly the resurgent momentum of the Reagan Revolution—led to new
questions about the limits of the New Deal and American liberalism generally. An
extensive literature developed across disciplines, which often emphasized an extremely
wide range of factors, especially related to the nature of the American labor movement
and the fragmented structure of the U.S. social policies and the “welfare state.” This
literature primarily came under the framework of larger methodological framework of

23
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Verso, 1996); Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-
1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 5, 257.
24
For an insightful essay on the more recent turn among historians generally to questions of “how” and
process, see Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, “Generational Turns,” American Historical Review 117 no. 3 (June
2012): 804-813.
12
historical institutionalism and the subfield of American Political Development within
political science.
25

Among historians, the dominant framework for understanding twentieth century
liberalism’s political limits (as opposed to social or intellectual weaknesses identified by
social critics such as Dwight MacDonald, the New Left generally, and the “new social
history”) originated in the edited volume, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order,
1930-1980, with major contributions from Alan Brinkley, Nelson Lichtenstein, Steve
Fraser, Gary Gerstle, and Ira Katznelson. Instead of seeing the New Deal principally as
either a blow for democracy or for hierarchy, these scholars sought to characterize it with
more complexity as a “political order” defined by “an ideological character, a moral
perspective, and a set of political relationships among policy elites, interest groups, and
electoral constituencies” which endured across four decades before collapsing.
26
Within
this arc of ascent and decline, a major emphasis was on the thwarted potential for a
“social democratic breakthrough”—the systemic use of government to transform
capitalism through counter-cyclical spending, planning, regulation of business, and
universal social services.
27

25
The literature is immense. For an overview, although now a bit dated, see Paul Pierson and Theda
Skocpol, "Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary Political Science,” in Political Science: The State of
the Discipline, Ira Katznelson and Helen Milner, eds. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002).
26
Barton J. Bernstein, “The Conservative Achievements of New Deal Reform,” in Towards a New Past:
Dissenting Essays in American History, Barton J. Bernstein, ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968). Steve
Fraser and Gerstle, Introduction to The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, Steve Fraser and
Gary Gerstle, eds. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), xi.
27
The phrase “social democratic breakthrough” comes from Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost
Opportunity?” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980.
13
Whether through the veto power of the Jim Crow Lobby in Congress, the
intellectual shift among New Deal policymakers away from vigorous state intervention in
the economy, the chilling effects of the Cold War, or the missteps of the industrial labor
union movement, progressives lost the initiative early on, foreclosing the possibility of
social democracy, and leaving space for the splintering of the New Deal coalition and the
conservative comeback. Michael Kazin, Alan Brinkley, Nelson Lichtenstein, Lizabeth
Cohen, and Ira Katznelson all articulated different versions of this “If Only” thesis.
28
As
with the New Left critics, the underlying assumption was that if only liberals and/or labor
had fought harder and smarter, they would have achieved greater success. If only they
retained a populist opposition to the corporate order, refused to embrace anti-
Communism at home and abroad, avoided the bureaucratization of labor unions, and
refused to separate class from race and gender, they could have made the moment live up
to its potential.
29
Instead, their ideological weakness and missteps led to the attenuation

28
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War, (New York: Knopf,
1995); Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?”; Michael Kazin, The Populist
Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective
Bargaining” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980; Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’
Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, (New York: Knopf, 2003); Steven
Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993);
Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor
(New York: Basic Books, 1995). On the labor movement’s failure to appreciate and integrate women in
their struggle, see Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor
Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991).
29
Historian Greg Downs critiques a similar misconception as it relates to Reconstruction in a piece for the
New York Times Room for Debate online section, “Contrasting the Civil War to the post-World War II
remaking of Germany and Japan, historians for decades looked to the nation’s lack of will. If only the
North had not been limited by its problematic labor ideologies, popular racism and fantasies of sectional
reconciliation, things might have been different…. If the North’s bitter fruits of victory offer any lesson for
today, it may be that such struggles are always long and are perhaps never complete but are still worth
fighting for.” Downs, “Occupation Took a Toll on the North” 2 July 2013,
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/07/02/who-won-the-civil-war/the-civil-war-and-the-perils-
of-occupation.
14
of the New Deal order and its enduring potential. Even the recent argument by Jefferson
Cowie and Nick Salvatore that the New Deal order constituted “The Long Exception” in
American politics, emphasizes the ideological baggage of individualism New Dealers
shared with the wider American culture (which mutually reinforced “the historic
weakness of organized labor, the burdens of race, and the enduring power of religious
faith”). Liberals’ failure was ideologically over-determined, in their telling.
30

Building on this concern for the fall of New Deal liberalism, political historians
largely turned their attention to grassroots conservatism, pushing beyond the visible
revolts of the “Silent Majority” in the late 1960s, to explore dissent over threats to

30
Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, “The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in
American History,” International Labor and Working-Class History 74 no. 1 (Fall 2008): 3-32. Also see
the responses, especially the one by Boyle which identifies this narrative of “if only” in a slightly different
manner from my characterization. No explanation of liberal weakness is complete without the U.S.’s
ideological individualism and the deep social-spatial fissures, but one of the great ironies, as my study tells
it, is the strategic misdirection stemming from progressives’ faith in the collective known as “the American
People” and their belief in a steadily advancing (collective) human history. The other great irony is that
nascent efforts to bridge this ideological and social fragmentation constantly foundered on the institutional
fragmentation of the U.S. polity and its federated, patchwork, territorially-based structure.
15
whiteness and corporate prerogatives as early as the 1930s.
31
The pendulum swung far in
the opposite direction from earlier notions of “liberal consensus”—to the point that
opposition to the New Deal appeared pervasive and endemic, which was hard to square
with the enormous contemporary popularity of Franklin Roosevelt himself and many of
the New Deal’s foundational policies such as Social Security. Liberalism seemed in
inexorable decline from the moment of its greatest triumph, as the victories of Nixon and
Reagan loomed, teleologically, as the New Deal’s order ironic, quasi-inevitable endpoint.
There have been some important exceptions to this narrative of self-inflicted
liberal retreat, largely stemming from recent historians of labor-liberalism like Kevin
Boyle and Joshua Freeman, as well as recent scholars of the “long civil rights movement”
such as Shana Bernstein. Boyle demonstrated the persistently social democratic ideology
of the United Auto Workers through the 1960s, while Freeman proffered the example of
New York City’s social democratic polity, undergirded by the city’s unions through the

31
No longer do “dominant narratives of twentieth-century United States history depict the rise of a
triumphant liberal state, shaped by the hopeful marriage of government and expertise and validated by a
‘liberal consensus’ of workers, corporations, southerners and northerners, whites and Blacks, Catholics and
Jews” as Thomas J. Sugrue decried nearly two decades ago, in “Crabgrass-Roots Politics: Race, Rights, and
the Reaction against Liberalism in the Urban North, 1940-1964,” Journal of American History 82
(September 1995): 551. The wave of studies on grassroots metropolitan conservatism includes Lisa
McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2002); Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los
Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and
the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005); Matthew Lassiter, The
Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006);
Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of
Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011) and Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of
Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). On the corporate counter-revolution against
New Deal liberalism, see Kimberly Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative
Movement From the New Deal to Reagan (New York: W. W. Nortion, 2009) and Elizabeth Fones-Wolf,
Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960, (Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 1994).
16
early 1970s.
32
But among these exceptions, only Doug Rossinow’s Visions of Progress,
synthetic narrative of progressive political culture from the late nineteenth century
through the contemporary era takes note of the crucial role of largely white, largely
middle-class left-liberals. And the breadth of his study precludes a focused, institutional
perspective.
33

This matters because while there has been an extensive literature debating what
Mike Davis termed “The Barren Marriage of American Labor and the Democratic Party,”
and a growing number of increasingly sophisticated studies of the unequal relationship
between white and non-white liberals, there has been almost no study of grassroots
liberals in their own right, and their own difficult relationship to the institutions of power,

32
Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1995); Joshua Freeman, Working Class New York (New York: The New Press, 2000). For initial
versions of “long civil rights” emphasizing the role of unions and the Popular Front Left, see Robert
Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil
Rights Movement,” Journal of American History 75 (1988): 786–811. For the now conventional view, see
Jacqueline Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” Journal of
American History 91 (2005): 1233-126. For a smart critique of chronological overreach and an
overemphasis on the importance of Communists, see Eric Arnesen, “Reconsidering the ‘Long Civil Rights
Movement,’” Historically Speaking 10 (April 2009): 31-34. For a depiction of the long civil rights
movement at the (multi-racial) grassroots that embraces Mary Dudziak’s emphasis on the way the Cold
War bolstered the possibilities of civil rights reform, see Shana Bernstein, Bridges of Reform: Interracial
Civil Rights Activism in Twentieth Century Los Angeles (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
33
Doug Rossinow, Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania, 2007).
17
including the Democratic Party, the Presidency, and the very notion of “the people.”
34

Too often it is assumed that white middle-class liberals strode easily through the halls of
power. While their status was privileged, grassroots liberals endured many challenges
and fights of their own. Grassroots liberals indeed existed, I argue, and they were not
always on the inside of political power, despite their own elevated social status. Because
their dilemmas and struggles have been neglected in many respects, it has been all too
easy to write off liberalism wholesale, from the left, and to obscure the difficult practical
and strategic conundrums activists faced in favor of prophetic-style criticism from the
outside looking in. There is value in beginning on the inside of these liberal movements
and looking outward.

The Present Study
This dissertation takes up that perspective. It traces a series of crucial yet
overlooked organizations that worked during the 1930s and 1940s to create a left-leaning
electoral and lobbying infrastructure. In so doing, it traces the arc of mainstream, largely
white, largely middle-class progressive engagement with electoral and legislative politics.
The stories of groups such as the Progressive National Committee, the National Citizens

34
Mike Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the U.S. Working
Class (New York: Verso, 1986); J. David Greenstone, Labor in American Politics (New York: Knopf,
1969), 361; David Plotke, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the
1930s and 1940s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). George Lipsitz, “The Possessive
Investment in Whiteness: Racialized Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American Studies,”
American Quarterly 47 no. 3 (September 1995): 369-387; Ira Katznelson, “Considerations on Social
Democracy in the United States,” Comparative Politics 11 no. 1 (October 1978): 77-99; Daniel HoSang,
Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2010); Lily Geismer, “Don’t Blame Us: Grassroots Liberalism in Massachusetts, 1960-
1990,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 2010); Barbara Soliz, “Liberal Politics and Whiteness in
Multiracial Los Angeles, 1942-1973,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Southern California, 2013).
18
Political Action Committee, and the Hollywood Democratic Committee constitute a key
phase in the longer history of liberals experimenting with strategies for building power
within the American political system. The tensions within these groups epitomized the
confused positioning of progressives in relation to the American political system, and to
the Democratic Party, in particular, as the primary vehicle for their ambitions. Internal
debates over which approaches, tactics, and organizational structures were most effective
occurred regularly and yet broke along unpredictable lines—not merely between
Communists and non-Communists, or between “liberals” and the “left.”
While the divide over Communism and anti-Communism did fissure “Popular
Front”-era liberalism by the late 1940s, the groups’ challenges were not reducible to Cold
War fractures, social group divisions, or putative ideological differences between more
centrist “liberals” and more left-wing “progressives.” In fact, this dissertation argues,
contrary to much historiography, that there was almost no distinction between “liberals”
and “progressives” until the early years of the Cold War, when a clear demarcation
emerged. By the early 1930s, “liberal” and “progressive” had become nearly synonymous
labels, defined by support for economic regulation, social welfare measures, and workers’
rights. Both were proudly claimed by the political descendants of the egalitarian, social
democratic strain of early twentieth century progressivism represented by activists such
as Jane Addams.
35

35
To distinguish them from their more inegalitarian and laissez faire libertarian liberal counterparts on the
one hand, and revolutionary socialist and anarchist leftists on the other, often scholars have referred to this
group as “left-liberals,” “the liberal left,” or “progressive liberals.”

19
The lack of coherent and autonomous vehicle for advancing their own vision, and
not self-inflicted liberal retreat from more truly progressive, radical, or left-wing
principles, the dissertation contends, is one of the most important explanations for the
paradoxical strength and weakness of mid-twentieth century American liberals. The
limits on the progressive thrust at the heart of the New Deal order had as much to do with
institutional fragmentation, as with progressives’ own ideology or timidity. Factors such
as the political culture of the American public, the exceptional conservatism of the
American business community, right-wing repression, federal policies that undermined
the political base of the liberal coalition, the Cold War, and the consequences of
American apartheid—all linked by a conservative Congressional coalition of Northern
Republicans and Southern Democrats—mattered immensely, but they suggest the great
challenges faced by grassroots liberals, not necessarily their own culpability.
36
It takes

36
On the conservative coalition, see Ira Katznelson, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder, “Limiting Liberalism:
The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933-1950,” Political Science Quarterly 108 (Summer 1993): 296-7;
James T. Patterson, Congressional Conservatism and the New Deal: The Growth of the Conservative
Coalition in Congress, 1933–39. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1967); Alan Brinkley, “The
New Deal and Southern Politics,” in Brinkley, Liberalism and Its Discontents, (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1998), 63-78. On aggressive corporate self-assertion as a key facet of American
exceptionalism, see Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Union: A Century of American Labor, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2002),Chapter 3. On corporate flight from organized labor, see Jefferson
Cowie, Capital Moves: RCA's 70-Year Quest for Cheap Labor (New Press, 2001); Thomas J. Sugrue, The
Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996); On the corporate counter-revolution against New Deal liberalism, see Kimberly Phillips-Fein,
Invisible Hands : The Making of the Conservative Movement From the New Deal to Reagan (W. W.
Norton, 2009); Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment (New York: Times Books,
1986); Elizabeth, Fones-Wolf, Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism,
1945-1960, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). On the turn to policies that undermined the New
Deal coalition, Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War, (New
York: Knopf, 1995); Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion (Basic Books, 1995); Lizabeth Cohen, A
Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, (New York: Knopf, 2003);
Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-
century America (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005); David M.P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy
and White Racial Politics in Suburban America, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
20
more than the “correct” position to seize the moment, this study suggests. Seizing the
moment often requires well-developed institutions and despite impressive work in a short
period of time, progressives in the mid 1940s were far behind in this effort.
Liberalism was a “fragile giant” which bore the marks of its breach birth into
American politics. Instead, of coming into the world head first, eyes wide open,
American liberalism descended more tentatively feet first, unsure of itself and toeing
around for a firm place to rest. No national organization held the banner of liberalism,
proclaiming it as a political program for governance. Instead, liberal ideas emerged prior
to the formation of a political home for their ambitions. Liberal ideas percolated in a
variety of political parties and yet found uncontested, unclaimed home in none of them.
Plus, the country’s messy patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments limited
liberals’ ability to create an overarching, national political vehicle. (This patchwork itself
was rooted in the nation’s federal system of government and the country’s uneven
regional development on a continental scale) Liberals were overly dependent on the
popularity and unifying power of President Franklin Roosevelt, a singular figure who
consistently undermined rather than encouraged the development of a durable power
center on his left flank. And liberals’ own aversion to partisanship and their wider beliefs
about how to achieve social and political progress—both inherited from their
Progressive-era predecessors—undermined their quest for power.
As these grassroots liberals searched for power, both within and outside the
Democratic Party, they encountered the contradictions of the New Deal Democratic order
head on. If the New Deal coalition was indeed a “fragile juggernaut,” as Cowie and
21
Salvatore suggest, it is worth asking how those at its heart perceived its strengths and
weaknesses.
37
To what extent did they believe in the inevitability of the “welfare state”
and the solidity of the “liberal consensus”? To what degree did they recognize its
fragility, wrestle with its internal contradictors, struggle forcefully against its opponents?
Could they have fought harder or smarter?
My research demonstrates that these progressives took very little for granted
politically. They saw clearly many threats to their ideals, from within and from outside
the New Deal coalition, and never felt content to rest on their laurels—with a few
important exceptions. If anything, they exaggerated the power of forces arrayed against
them and in the Democratic Party, even fearing the onset of fascism in America. This
propelled almost all of them away from Truman at all costs. “Necessity” rather than
feasibility guided their choices. If they had any complacency, it was their faith in the
virtue and wisdom of “the American People.” Their inclination to take for granted the

37
Robert Zieger coined the phrase “fragile giant” to characterize the industrial labor movement during the
same era. The CIO: 1935–1955, (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 1. Cowie and Salvatore, “The
Long Exception,” 5.
22
people’s support was in many ways their greatest weakness.
38
The decision to break away
from the Democratic Party and form the Progressive Party in 1948 owed a great deal to
the logic valorizing “the American People” as an essentially virtuous and wise group who
would vote and act in progressive ways if only they had the right vehicle and heard the
right message, free from the shackles of the two major parties. The implicit “theories of
change” embedded in their ideologies—the cultural frames that guided and structured
their decision-making processes—owed a great debt to more widespread, yet deeply
problematic tropes in mainstream and left-wing American political culture. In particular,
an anti-partisan “people versus the interests” model of political process passed down
from early twentieth century progressives to those who struggled against the Cold War

38
In the broadly liberal, middle-class milieu in which I came of age during the 1990s (and to a lesser
extent, the earlier 2000s), appeals to the fundamental virtue and wisdom of the American people were still
commonplace. The entirely unanticipated re-election of George W. Bush as U.S. President began t trigger a
rethinking of this unquestioned notion. My initial reaction was empathetic understanding of small-town and
rural “Red America.” But traveling and studying outside the U.S. at the same time, especially in Chile,
gave me an appreciation of the great stakes of American power in the political, military, economic and
cultural realms. And then intellectually, the experience of reading Thomas Sugrue’s work on Detroit finally
cracked my latent assumptions about the timeless virtue of the American people and set me down a path
toward the metropolitan history subfield, which fore-grounded the complicity of ordinary Americans in the
perpetuation of inequality and the collapse of social democratic aspirations. The long line of scholarship
from Sugrue’s predecessors—Arnold Hirsch, George Lipsitz, and Ira Katznelson—to the “New Suburban
historians—Matt Lassiter, Kevin Kruse, and Robert Self—to the most recent practitioners—Lily Geismer,
Daniel HoSang, and Barbara Soliz—does not let one forget this fact so easily. With this new perspective, I
set out to find and explore those political groups who did not acquiesce so easily into the swelling anti-
egalitarian, anti-social democratic tide. Recognizing the similar venerations of “the people,” variously
defined among leftists of many stripes, Communist and beyond, and cognizant of the institutional fractures
occasioned by their own blind spots, I sought to explore the institutional frameworks through which social
democrats attempted to realize their ideals. My footnotes can only faintly suggestmy deep debt to varied
strand of civically-engaged inquiry and especially to those scholars working at the intersection of such
threads.
23
itself.
39

Overall, many scholars have described important many of the conundrums faced
by progressives without naming the interconnected dilemmas they faced. There has been
too much emphasis on “lost opportunities” at specific moments and not enough on an
appreciation for the conjuncture of factors that made a breakthrough nearly impossible.
The progressive model was both entirely fitting to the American political system and
massively misplaced. The early progressive model of stages of social change as decisive
transformation, and the valorization of “the American people” against “the special
interests,” (and to a lesser extent the emphasis on the importance of efficient, centralized
administration) were immensely popular notions with the American people, but they
served to blind progressive leaders on the need to actually organize in diverse
communities to realize the changes in which they so deeply believed. In contrast, civil
rights organizations among marginalized communities and religious crusaders (e.g. the
prohibitionists) took nothing for granted. They knew that the people were not so
inherently virtuous they could be trusted to do the right thing. And they knew social
transformation was not a foregone conclusion of historical development. It is no
coincidence that activist-intellectuals such Carey McWilliams, who was deeply involved

39
The term “theory of change” originates from the contemporary social movement word and the social
service sector, both of which are seeking to be more intentional, precise and transparent about how their
work will translate into a real-world impact. The benefit of the term is that it assesses in a deeply practical
way the relationship between an organization’s own capacities, values, and assumptions, on the one hand,
and the wider world of social institutions and processes, on the other hand. It a useful concept for historians
to apply to organizations and movements from the past because this dual, situated perspective it allows for
assessment that takes seriously both internal values and external forces and shows empirically the on-going
relationships between them without facile reductionism or moralizing. An early use of the term is Carol H.
Weiss, “Have We Learned Anything New About the Use of Evaluation?,” American Journal of Evaluation
19 no. 1 (1998): 21-33.
24
in the intertwined struggle against race and class exploitation in the diverse communities
of Southern California was far less complacent than many Eastern intellectuals such as
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Blindness to matters of race, class, and imperial power led to
compelling rhetoric about the wisdom of the American people but it also led to strategic
dead-ends. Belief in sweeping historical transformation and the need for the
“modernization” of government led to a focus on building administration for the people,
not building power with the people. Progressives and liberals overwhelmingly coalesced
around elections and candidates and then failed to stay together afterwards and continue
the work of widespread and intentional organizing among diverse communities. The
decision to stay engaged in such work, however, would not have been cost-free. The
patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments generated by federal and fragmented
system of the American government would have made such work challenging. But out of
short-term political calculations by leading politicians and general trepidation, there were
few sustained attempts, at least until the 1950s.
In many respects, this dissertation brings together the various pieces of the puzzle
of liberal success and failure presented by others and brings them together within a
broader intellectual framework centered on the concept of a dilemma, in which the
protagonists are thrust into a situation in which they are faced with no good options. The
dissertation explores these interconnected dilemmas by examining organizations almost
no one has studied and equally important, by studying them in tandem and showing their
historical relationship as part of a developing tradition of grassroots progressive
engagement in party politics.
25
The heart of this dissertation is a series of crucial yet overlooked organizations
that worked during the 1930s and 1940s to create a left-leaning electoral and lobbying
infrastructure: the National Progressive League (1932), the Progressive National
Committee (1936), the National Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt (1940),
the National Citizens Political Action Committee (1943-1946), the Motion Picture
Democratic Committee (1937-39), Hollywood for Roosevelt (1940) and the Hollywood
Democratic Committee (1943-1947) constitute a key phase in the longer history of
liberals experimenting with strategies for building power within the American political
system. The tensions within these groups epitomized the confused positioning of
progressives in relation to the American political system, and to the Democratic Party, in
particular, as the primary vehicle for their ambitions. Internal debates over which
approaches, tactics, and organizational structures were most effective occurred regularly
and yet broke along unpredictable lines—not merely between Communists and non-
Communists, or between “liberals” and the “left.”
Most of these groups have rarely been studied in depth as organizations and no
scholar has ever studied them as a coherent series and made clear that they formed links
in a continuous chain as part of a much larger pattern of American political development.
Nor have they been adequately classified as a type of political institution. These
organizations do not necessarily fit into existing typologies of political organizations. To
the extent historians have classified them, it has been under the category of Popular Front
organizations. But this is a partial error. To compartmentalize them into one era in
history, and one that has far more porous boundaries than has been appreciated, is to
26
neglect their greater significance. This was not only the era of the Popular Front. It was
also the beginning of a much longer process of mutual cooptation between liberals and
the Democratic Party and these organizations represent a sort of “proto-party,” which for
many of its backers, were the forerunner of a wider, national vehicle to coordinate and
drive progressive forces more generally. The existing political parties were not
programmatic. Despite their aversion to parties, these progressives hoped to have some
type of vehicle to enact their will, and which would follow a distinct set of principles and
policies, rather than function jumbled juxtaposition of different political elements tied
together only by convenience and happenstance.
Equally important, this dissertation undermines historians’ prevailing
periodization schemes in several respects. It highlights the persistence of Progressive-era
cultural frames, of leading political figures, and of organizational models into the 1940s
and demonstrates their influence on the progressive politics of the Popular Front era in
unexpected ways. The study also demonstrates the continuities within the Popular Front
era and suggests the persistence of key Popular Front-era progressive tropes, leaders, and
constituencies past the typical 1948 demarcation. On a more abstract level, these
overlapping periodizations demonstrate the inadequacy of punctuated equilibrium models
of American Political Development (APD), in which shifts happen only at key
conjunctures. This type of thinking, often imported from the electoral realignment school,
has filtered into the historical literature as well. But it should be said explicitly what
historians have already implied in many forms—the puzzle of change and continuity,
with which APD scholars are now wrestling, is germane to how historians think and
27
conceptualize their own work. What this study demonstrates, along with many other fine
works of history on other topics, is that the best metaphor for solving the puzzle of
change and continuity is intercurrence, which Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek have
coined to foreground the “bumping and grinding” elements of political life, how
institutions with distinct trajectories and animating ideals, impinge on one another, and
thereby generate the contradictions out of which change arises.
40
Intercurrence locates the
“significance of institutions in the operation of multiple, often incongruous, political
orderings at the same time” and views the polity “as an aggregation of outward reaching,
interactive, mutually impinging institutions and the reactions it provokes.”
41

This dissertation also suggests the need for a much broader conception of
institutions than is currently fashionable in political science. Institutions are not merely
formal rules of the game—they are living, breathing ensembles of people, roles, and
expectations. They are embodied and situated, not abstract and formal, even at their
highest aspirations to formality and abstraction they are being articulated and mediated
by people in the flesh.
Likewise, this account demonstrates to APD and institutionalist scholars the need
to consider how local, small-scale structures and choices can have major ramifications at

40
Karen Orren and Stephen Skowronek, The Search for American Political Development, (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 113.
41
Ibid., 81, 85. On varying modes of change that do not conform to the traditional typologies of change,
see Jacob Hacker, “Privatizing Risk Without Privatizing the Welfare State: The Hidden Politics of Social
Retrenchment in the United States,” American Political Science Review 98 no. 2 (May 2004): 243-60; Jeb
Barnes, “Courts and the Puzzle of Institutional Stability and Change: Administrative Drift and Judicial
Innovation in the Case of Asbestos,” Political Research Quarterly 61 no. 4 (December 2008): 636-648.

28
the national level, lasting for many decades. The peculiar structure of the party
alignments in New York as of the early 1900s had enduring significance for American
party system since then. While the liberals in most places found a home in the Republican
Party, the omnipresence of Democrats in New York meant that the liberals leaders who
emerged there—Franklin D. Roosevelt, above all—were Democrats and consequently the
Democratic Party, and not the Republican Party became a vehicle of liberalism.
42

Likewise, the dissertation shows that the patchwork of divergent local partisan
alignments across the county militated against the establishment of programmatic
partisanship on a national level. Hence, institutionalists concerned primarily with the
development of national politics and policy still have a vital need to appreciate and study
rich, local contexts.
Finally, the dissertation suggests what historical institutionalists miss by their
neglect of cultural frames. Progressives’ decisions might appear blundering and ill-
conceived in hindsight, but realizing that those stemmed from very particular and long-
standing ingrained notions of understanding the world makes them intelligible on their
own terms, even if their consequences were negative. These cultural frames were not
programmatic ideologies, focused on achieving a certain policy platform or even on a
given set of issues. They were instead the entire paradigm through which these
historically situated political actors saw and acted upon the world. Valorizing the

42
On this point, see Philip J. Ethington and David P. Levitus, “Placing American Political Development:
Cities, Regions, and Regimes, 1789-2008,” in The City in American Political Development, Richardson
Dilworth, ed. (New York: Routledge, 2009).

29
American people and reviling partisanship informed so much of their thinking and so
many of their decisions at key junctures.

Key Words from the Progressive Era to Popular Front Liberalism
This section discusses the words at the core of this study because they are both so
commonplace and so contested as concepts. Equally important, these terms—liberal,
progressive, social democracy, Popular Front—are historical themselves. They have
changed alongside and as a result of the transformations at the center of this study, thus
indexing critical shifts in American politics. And excavating their histories prior to this
period reveals how the shape of the mid-twentieth century’s political arena materialized
in the first place, the product of accumulated layers of sentiment and institutional
outcroppings, crevices, and fault lines.
Throughout this study, I use the terms “liberal and “progressive” as synonyms for
several reasons. In contemporary America, the terms “liberal and “progressive” circulate
more widely than any other term to describe people on the left-of-center. The two words
operate as near synonyms, with only slight differences of emphasis. Now in American
popular discourse, liberal is the older, more conventional term for anyone left-of-center,
while progressive is the young upstart, less freighted with the baggage of the Democratic
Party establishment. Beginning in the 1980s, business-minded centrists and left-leaning
grassroots activists claimed its mantle, independently of one another, seeking to
distinguish themselves from the liberalism voters had seemed to reject.
43

43
Rossinow, Visions of Progress, 257-260.
30
During the 1930s and 1940s, the terms also circulated almost interchangeably but
their connotations bore little resemblance to today’s iterations. At that time, the “liberal”
and “progressive” labels were defined by support for economic regulation, social welfare
measures, and workers’ rights. Both were proudly claimed by the political descendants of
the egalitarian, social democratic strain of early twentieth century progressivism
represented by activists such as Jane Addams. They had only recently become synonyms
and their distinct associations and undertones remained yoked to divergent starting
points.
“Progressive” retained its associations with respectable, predominantly Anglo-
Protestant and middle-class reformers. The concept of “progress” at the heart of the term
signified a belief that profound social and political transformation was possible, even
inevitable. “Liberal” maintained ties to the cultural pluralism that had emerged in the
nation’s multi-ethnic metropolises, especially in the aversion to cultural policing
represented by Prohibition. “Liberal” represented the spirit of open-mindedness and
tolerance.
The two terms ceased to be used interchangeably at the onset of the Cold War.
When Henry Wallace ran for President on the newly-formed Progressive Party ticket as a
fierce critic of the U.S. role in the Cold War the term progressive became a mark of Red
influence, despite its long-lived patina of respectability. And soon the concept of the
“progressive” itself would come in for severe criticism by intellectuals such as Dwight
MacDonald and Richard Hofstadter, who both derided it for reducing all issues, no matter
how complex, to a Manichean conflict between good and evil. Liberal became the
31
exclusively preferred label for those on the anti-Communist left-of-center in the U.S. in
large part because the term emphasized the importance of individual liberty in contrast to
the totalitarianism they decried on the far left and the far right. “Radical” became the
preferred label for those launching critiques of the root causes of oppression and
alienation in American society.
44

The Conceptual Underpinnings of Liberalism and Progressivism
It is critical to understand the complicated, winding history of the concepts of
liberalism and progressivism because these genealogies foreshadow and reveal
significant characteristics of left-leaning movements in the mid-twentieth century and
their tempestuous relationship to mainstream political institutions. Although historians
have resigned themselves to seeing many meanings inherent in the Progressive label, the
concept of a “Progressive Era” has retained its salience.
45
Perhaps an accident of
historiographical development, this nomenclature also has an important historical

44
Dwight Macdonald, “The Root is Man” politics, 3 (July 1946): 97-115; and “The Root is Man, Part
Two” politics, 3 (October 1946): 194-214; cited in Rossinow, Visions of Progress, 206. For a powerful
implicit critique of the prevailing Beardian academic tendency to understand history in terms of competing
social groups and economic interests, see Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the
Men Who Made It (New York: Knopf, 1948). Hofstadter’s later study is more pointed on this subject, The
Progressive Historians (New York: Knopf, 1968). Also of note: the term liberalism became the focus on
intellectual discourse in the late 1930s as the rise of fascism and communism led writers to identify within
liberalism the unique concern for individual liberty and moderation which distinguished and American and
Western societies more generally from these authoritarian regimes. See Dorothy Ross, “Liberalism,” in A
Companion to American Thought, Richard Wightman Fox and James T. Kloppenberg, ed. (New York:
Wiley Blackwell, 1996), 398.
45
Peter Filene, “An Obituary for the ‘Progressive Movement,’” American Quarterly 22 (Spring 1970): 20-
34; Daniel T. Rodgers, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10 (December 1982):
121. For an excellent review essay to which this study is indebted, see Robert D. Johnston, “Re-
Democratizing the Progressive Era: The Politics of Progressive Era Political Historiography,” The Journal
of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 1 no. 1 (January 2002): 68-92.
32
significance. Above all, the rise of progressivism as concept and practice involved a new
and widespread form of historical consciousness. Progressives all shared the belief the
society had moved from one stage to another and that new forms of willful, collective
action were necessary to remedy the problems of the incipient current stage and advance
successfully to the next era. Hence why the concept of “progress” loomed so large.
Although occasionally used as a synonym for liberal, radical or humanitarian before the
Civil War, the term began to gain its greatest salience only after the war, as a way to
capture the sense of social transformation underway and the need to redirect it.
46

Progressives disagreed deeply amongst themselves about the nature of progress.
Although all concurred that “society”—and not the “individual” as the late twentieth
century discourse suggested—was the key unit that demanded their attention, they
debated over what constituted the boundaries of society and its meaning. Who counted as
worthy of inclusion in their vision of a new era and why varied dramatically. They
believed in solidarity, but it was a solidarity often narrowly circumscribed to a particular
race or nation. And progressives expressed myriad, often conflicting views on whether

46
For an extended and fascinating etymology see “progressive,” Oxford English Dictionary. The earliest
meanings of “progressive” in the 17
th
and 18
th
centuries merely indicated an event or process that went
through several successive stages. By the late 18
th
and early 19
th
centuries, the term gained the sense of
favoring conscious innovation in a variety of fields. In the 1830s and 1840s, “progressive” entered debates
within American Protestantism as a label for those seeking to update Christian doctrines and practices. The
same term occasionally applied to these Northern, abolitionist evangelical Protestants in their political
battles in the Whig, Liberty, American, Parties which were the predecessors of the Republican Party. The
examples presented in the entry “progressive” from the Oxford English Dictionary are illuminating: “The
Barnburners are the progressives, the radicals.” Semi-Weekly News (Fredericksburgh, Va.) 21 Oct. 2/2
1847; “There is another feature in these… establishments which should endear them to all progressive-
minded, liberal and philanthropic humanitarians.” U.S. Democratic Rev. Nov. 393 1854.

33
the problems of the current era were economic, cultural, racial, biological, social,
political, or governmental in nature.
47

In the words of historian Eldon Eisenach, “Progressives, from the most scientific-
technocratic to the most radical-socialist, conceived of their projects as having coherence
and meaning because they were located within a social evolutionary framework of
history. Wherever one turns—feminist theory, the theology of the social gospel, theories
of economic competition, consumption and distribution, or theories of personality
development and pedagogy—one confronts a social evolutionary framework within
which a coherent “people” or “race” is the primary subject and agent.”
48

Progressivism, it should be clear then, was not principally underpinned by
dissident pleas for liberty or justice. What eugenicists and pioneers of Jim Crow shared
with racially egalitarian socialists was instead a sociological and historical consciousness
that pivoted on the notion of transformation. They shared a revolt against laissez faire
and sought, willfully, to remake the world through collective action. The opponents of the
progressives were not “conservatives,” as defined in twentieth century terms, but those
who kept faith with the laissez faire doctrines of individual initiative and liberty of
contract and the entrenched interests, especially corporate, which fought these varied
reform efforts. But some of the greatest divides were among progressives themselves,

47
Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2001); Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age
(Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998).
48
Eldon J. Eisenach, The Lost Promise of Progressivism (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1994), 6.
34
which makes sense given that progressivism was more a paradigm-shift in the public
consciousness and less a specific, discrete movement.
49

All progressives claimed to fight on behalf of “the people”—whose interest was
understood as indivisible—and so, logically, had to and did dismiss any opponents as
“special interests.” The frame of “the people versus the interests” quickly became the
dominant trope of the political discourse in the Progressive Era U.S., building on a long
legacy of republican rhetoric about the people, virtuous and productive, pitted against
unproductive elites and unworthy poor.
50
Progressives were not advocates for the
marginalized, but proponents of what they saw as the common good through collective
action. And a large swath of progressives engaged often in “coercive moral crusades and
the effective, and frequently conscious, disenfranchisement of working-class and black

49
In Walter Lippmann’s pithy summation, progressives were simply those Americans who rejected the
“drift” of a rudderless, complacent nation under hands-off helmsmanship and who wished to establish
“mastery” over the nation’s errant course by seizing the wheel themselves and steering it toward a better
future. Lippman, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest (New York: Mitchell
Kennerley, 1912).
50
On republican rhetoric around virtue, see James T. Kloppenberg, “The Virtues of Liberalism:
Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse,” Journal of American
History 74 no. 1 (June 1987): 9-33.
On the discourse of progressivism, see James J. Connolly, The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban
Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Philip J. Ethington,
The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001). Party-weakening reforms, introduced by an importance subset of
progressives, pushed politicians to find new ways of mobilizing newly estranged citizens to political
participation and they seized people versus interests trope embedded in the language of progressivism as a
means toward this end. In Boston, for instance, James Connolly shows that when Yankee politicians
attacked the selfish interests of Irish political bosses, ethnic politicians inverted the formula and cast their
own ethnic communities as the virtuous people and the Yankee economic elite as the selfish interests. The
advent of muckraking journalism around the turn of the century further contributed to the framing of
politics in these terms.

35
voters.” Progressives were deeply involved with the “rise of scientific racism, the violent
institutionalization of Jim Crow, and the cultural, political, legal, and economic
rigidification of racial categories.”
51

Those later considered leftists and liberals comprised only a slice of self-
proclaimed progressives in the Progressive Era. Later scholars have been misled about
the left and liberal inclinations of progressivism as a whole by the disproportionate
volubility of the left-inclined progressives. The movement’s very first history, written by
Benjamin Parke De Witt in 1915, posed Progressives as those who battled for justice
against the forces of privilege. Charles and Mary Beard hailed progressive reform as a
move "towards social democracy," and Harold Faulkner articulated the common wisdom
in his upbeat The Quest for Social Justice. But these university-based intellectuals were
disproportionately involved in and sympathetic to the democratic, egalitarian, and social
justice-oriented subset of progressives and thus overstated their reach.
52

The question remains of how this subset of Progressive reformers became known
as liberals and then, subsequently how the term liberal became synonymous with
progressive in general, and why other terms such as “social democratic” never took hold.
As one English newspaperman expressed it as early as 1892, “there were Progressives

51
Johnston, “Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era,” 77, 84. The quote is a summary of the cohort of
studies from the late 1970s through the 1990s.
52
Benjamin Parke De Witt, The Progressive Movement (New York: Macmillan, 1915); Charles and Mary
Beard, The Rise of American Civilization, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1933), 538-608; Harold
Underwood Faulkner, The Quest for Social Justice, 1898-1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1931); all cited in
Johnston, “Re-Democratizing the Progressive Era,” 72.

36
who are not Liberals, but … there are no Liberals who are not Progressives.”
53
By the late
1910s, liberal became a term of choice for a “reform outlook” with “shifting proportions
of concern for social justice and social stability.” But before 1910, the term liberal almost
never applied to those advocating government regulation, social welfare measures and
workers’ rights. As Doug Rossinow aptly observes, historians often employ a slight-of-
hand in which nineteenth century laissez faire individualist liberalism is replaced by
Progressive Era reform efforts, authoritarian and egalitarian alike, and then suddenly,
after World War I, modern liberalism appears as moderately democratic movement for
fairness and security, with proclamations of solidarity with “the people.”
54

The term liberal had signified an embrace of laissez faire in European countries
far more than it had in the U.S and it rarely circulated much in American political
discourse at all until the late nineteenth century.
55
When it slowly came into use as a
synonym for supporters of business regulation, social welfare measures, and workers’

53
See “progressive,” Oxford English Dictionary, quoting Ld. Rosebery, The Daily News 2 Mar. 2/6, 1892.
54
Rossinow, Visions of Progress, 14.
55
The English term “liberal” derived from old French / Latin in the 14
th
century. Early in its development
it indicated a general sense of freedom, but beginning in the 15
th
century, its meaning narrowed to
emphasize formal permission or privilege. License was a contemporaneous synonym that emphasized the
lack of restraint via “licentious.” By the mid 17
th
century, the emergence of the term “liberty” broadened
the concept to extend beyond a special class of free men. By the late 18
th
century, it suggested an open-
mindedness and unorthodox attitude. In the U.S., before Gilded Age, a “liberal” person meant someone
who “displayed personal and intellectual openness, tolerance, and flexibility, often a freethinker, in the
tradition of Thomas Paine and Robert Ingersoll, hostile to religious orthodoxy.” Rossinow, Visions of
Progress, 22. The term had a political meaning in other countries, such as the liberales of 1810s Spain.
Self-titled liberal parties in Europe, based in the middle class and values of individual responsibility and
opportunity reached their peak at the end of the nineteenth century before their eclipse by socialist parties.
Ross, “Liberalism,” 398. In the U.S. after the Civil War, the term liberal was principally claimed by elitist,
laissez faire proponents Manchester economics and opponents of political corruption. Rossinow, Visions of
Progress, 21-25.

37
rights, it did so on the back of a similar turn in British political speech, and for the similar
reasons. In an individual-centered Anglo tradition, government intervention was often
justified on the grounds of enabling the greater effective liberty of each human being. In
Britain, this political clustering had garnered the name “new liberalism,” many decades
previous, but not in the U.S. As Dorothy Ross writes, “the generic term [was] captured by
reformist liberals, who adapted their individualist tradition to social democratic politics,
extended the domain of rights and government’s responsibility to ensure equality more
deeply into civil society.”
56

The key movers behind this shift numbered only one of the many segments of the
Progressive Era movement for reform. In the U.S., starting in the 1880s, efforts to tame
capitalism’s “destructive excesses” began to gain currency among the respectable middle
classes. These American reformers, “mostly white, Protestant, Northern urbanites,” in
Rossinow’s words, “rebelled against the doctrine of unregulated capitalism and sought to
transcend class conflict by forming a political movement that would help forge a new
society, harmonious and fair.” In particular, on what would come to be the liberal-left,
reform icons such as settlement house founder Jane Addams and writer Henry Demarest
Lloyd promoted an activist government that would enact humane and egalitarian policies,
backed by democratic mobilization and grounded in Christian ethics. Such a movement
sought to empower workers, giving them a vote in the halls of power alongside middle-
class reformers, but not an exclusive mandate to rule alone.
57

56
Ross, “Liberalism,” 398.
57
Rossinow, Visions of Progress, 3.
38
Thus, equally important in distinguishing “liberals” from “progressive reformers”
in general was liberals’ cosmopolitan embrace of difference. The spirit of tolerance and
flexibility associated with the liberal ideal previously fit well with both settlement house
leaders engaging in the work of immigrant integration and urban machine politicians
seeking the immigrant vote.
58
In many other countries, the kind of policies and politics
backed by American progressives and liberals would have been considered “social
democratic,” but this term never gained traction in the U.S. The reasons are instructive.

Social Democracy in America and the World
There has been an inchoate, but nonetheless very real social democratic tradition
particular to the United States. Its proponents have rarely posed it as an alternative to
mainstream American political culture. Nor has it been seen, in its own right, as the
culmination of the main stream of American political culture. Indeed, social democracy
has never emerged as a sustained category of political thought or practice in the U.S. But
better than any other, the term captures the substance of social and political ideas situated
on the left-wing of America’s mainstream, liberal-republican political culture. Its use in
political debates predates that of terms such as “liberal,” “progressive,” and “left.”

58
On Jane Addams’ and settlement house workers’ attempts to grapple with difference, see Philip J.
Ethington, “The Metropolis and Multicultural Ethics: Direct Democracy versus Deliberative Democracy in
the Progressive Era,” in Progressivism and the New Democracy, Sidney M. Milkis and Jerome M. Mileur,
eds. (Amherst: Massachusetts University Press, 1999). On urban machine politicians and liberalism, see J.
Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert F. Wagner and The Rise of Urban Liberalism (New York: Athenaeum,
1968; John D. Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,
1973). On the “radical” progressives who would not have considered themselves “liberal” see the white
Portlanders who populate Robert Johnston’s study, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the
Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003).
39
Emerging first in the mid-nineteenth century, the concept of “social democracy”
represented an attempt within the American reform tradition to confront the inequities
and injustices occasioned by the growth of a capitalist economy and to maintain the
conditions for citizenship through varied forms of collective action. Long before
Progressive-era proclamations of a new stage of history in social and economic relations,
mid-nineteenth century social democrats sought to corral market forces and reinforce
democracy amid new economic circumstances.
59

“Social democrat” emerged in rough simultaneity as a term in English, French,
and German throughout the 1840s. Initially, the label often indicated a person who
adhered to socialism itself, but the definition of a socialist government and society
remained hazy and uncertain. “Social democracy,” (and its adjectival counterparts) in
practice, came to take on associations with a broad range of reforms that sought to
systemically counteract the inequalities and degradations associated with the
development of industrial capitalism, in one way or another. In the U.S., social
democracy, as Adam-Max Tuchinsky comments, was not a full-fledged tradition, not a
head-on challenge to liberalism, not a “third way,” and not “liberalism’s natural
progress.” In the U.S., social democratic advocacy emerged out of the “home-grown”
radical reform tradition which stood not as a distinct alternative to the mainstream
political cultural stew of liberal, republican, and Protestant ideas, but which instead

59
Adam-Max Tuchinsky, “‘The Bourgeoisie Will Fall and Fall Forever’: The New-York Tribune, the 1848
French Revolution, and the Evolution of Social Democratic Discourse in the United States,” Journal of
American History 92 no. 4 (September 2005): 470-97; Adam-Max Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley's New-York
Tribune: Civil War-Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009);
James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and
American Thought, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
40
worked within this mix, stretching these discourses to respond to new historical
circumstances.
60

For far too long, the claim of American exceptionalism dominated discussions of
socialism and liberalism within the U.S. The better framework is one that situates
national particularity within a universe of varied trajectories. No one nation—or set of
them—forms the baseline against which others can be measured. All nations must be
understood in relation to one another, as part of a dynamic international and transnational
set of flows and interactions.
The countries of Latin America, Europe and North America all included a mix of
political cultural traditions such as liberalism, republicanism, Christianity, democracy,
sovereignty, rights, but the varying proportions and distinct institutional and social
circumstances pushed different nations along different paths as they adapted existing
political ideas and forms to new economic and social realities. The form and significance
of the emerging idea of social democracy thus varied significantly across national and
regional contexts.
The U.S. was amenable to certain aspects of social democratic ideas from its early
years. From its establishment, “Religious notions of the covenant, the American
Revolutions’s declaration of the natural right to rebellion against oppressive authority, the
vaunting of transcendent common good in early state constitutions, the idea of a formally

60
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1985), 286-88; Adam-Max Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune; and see “social
democrat” and “social democratic” in the Oxford English Dictionary. On the mix of traditions generally,
James T. Kloppenberg, “The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early
American Political Discourse,” Journal of American History 74 no. 1 (June 1987): 9-33.
41
classless state—all marked the republic’s mainstream political culture…—tempered by
slavery and other injustices.”
61
The ideal of equality could be and often was turned into a
“blistering political critique of the exploitative power of moneyed few over productive
many.” Before the Civil War, government policies that invoked the common weal to
infringe upon private property rights passed muster throughout the judicial system. And
from the Revolution until the Civil War, a communitarian spirit prevailed that “reflected
widely felt spiritual and political disquiet amid early market revolution.” From
millenarian Protestant sects to more secular communitarians, Americans experimented in
significant numbers with new, non-market economic and social institutions such as
Robert Owen’s cooperative manufacturing villages, winning a fair degree of toleration
and even popular interest. Whiggish reformer Horace Greeley sympathetically discussed
in his New York Tribune. “Orthodox proponents of land reform, labor reform, education
reform, antislavery mingled with socialist sympathizers like George Henry Evans’
National Reform Association”
62
In Adam-Max Tuchinsky’s account, Whig and
Republican social reformers proclaimed “the hazards of the free market and the necessity
of collective responses, be they state or cooperative.”
63
In so doing, they coalesced before
the Civil War in support of labor rights and in opposition to slavery, and they tilled the
intellectual ground for later social movements such as the Knights of Labor, the Farmers'
Alliances, and Progressive-era reform.

61
Sean Wilentz, “Socialism” in A Companion to American Thought, Richard Wightman Fox and James T.
Kloppenberg, ed. (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 1996), 637.
62
Wilentz, “Socialism,” 638.
63
Adam-Max Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, 241.
42
In the U.S., from the mid-nineteenth century onward, social democratic thinking
inflected the left-wing of mainstream political culture on a recurrent basis without
succeeding in dominating the central current of American politics or gaining an
independent, self-titled categorical or institutional home of its own. Social democrats in
the U.S. sought social democracy less as a structural goal in its own right and more as a
practical fulfillment of their deeply-held commitments to the dignity, equality, and
effective liberty of all people—or at the very least, all Americans of the proper racial and
gender categorization. American social democrats took the individual, the citizen, and the
republic as their starting points and reasoned that collective action, whether via the
government, cooperatives, unions or some combination thereof, would be necessary to
ensure that fairness and equality in the market place and thus defend the sanctity of the
pillars of American democracy.
In Europe, many forms of socialism aside from Marxism also emerged, but the
political universe through which they evolved marked them in distinctive ways. Self-
proclaimed liberalism and republicanism represented the strongest insurgent political
force in most European countries throughout the nineteenth century with a focus on
dethroning the monarchy and landed aristocracy. Only once these forces began to
succeed in their goals at the century’s end, did socialism, which also targeted the
inequities of the market and the concentration of wealth and power among capitalist
elites, gain salience intellectually and politically. The decline of liberalism and
republicanism in the wake of World War I further opened a path for self-proclaimed
laborites, socialists and communists to stake their own claims in the give-and-take of
43
party politics.
64
Socialists and social democrats tended to define themselves as
categorically separate and distinct from more established liberal and republican parties,
often rejecting their “bourgeois” values and even more frequently the relevance, much
less the beneficence of Christianity and religion generally.
Latin American countries, as a general matter, followed another path in political
culture, particularly in relation to social democracy. Greg Grandin observes that although
these nations shared the United States’ “imperial anticolonialism,” they followed distinct
paths in reconciling “the elemental tension within liberalism between universalism and
difference.”
65
Race and class differences were accepted as inherent aspects of the social
order and political structures consciously reckoned with them. Independence leaders and
intellectuals accorded the state a much greater role in promoting virtuous citizenship and
the commonweal. Unlike in the U.S., the liberal notion that individuals’ pursuit of their
private self-interests would redound to the benefit of the public good was far less credible
and persuasive. As Grandin writes
After centuries of colonialism that had left the region divided between a
subjugated majority and an oligarchic elite, it would take more than the
unleashing of individual interest to generate republican virtue. It would
take a strong executive presiding over a moral state that would “make men
good, and consequently happy.” The goal of constituted societies was,
Bolivar wrote, to produce “the greatest possible sum of happiness, the
greatest social security, and the highest degree of political stability.”
66

64
Wilentz, “Socialism,” 637.
65
Greg Grandin, “The Liberal Traditions in the Americas: Rights, Sovereignty, and the Origins of Liberal
Multilateralism,” American Historical Review 117 no. 1 (February 2012): 68-91. Quote on page 71.
66
Ibid., 73.
44
This history yielded, by the end of the eighteenth century, a republicanism
that was more inclusive than its counterpart in the United States, in the
sense that its advocates were products of a colonial regime that for
centuries had openly acknowledged the problem that racial difference
posed to its universalism; and also more activist, in that they envisioned a
strong state as needed to transcend that regime.
67

These traditions shaped the development of liberalism, republicanism, and social
democracy in quite particular ways. Unlike the inchoate social democratic inflection of
U.S. reformers dedicated to moral principles of equality and liberty or the self-conscious
left-wing partisanship of European nations, in Latin American countries, a commitment
to state action pervaded political culture across the partisan spectrum. From insurgent
cries for “popular liberalism” and “popular republicanism” to “agrarianism, populism,
nationalism, and different forms of socialism” to twentieth century dictatorships, the state
was at the center of Latin American political culture. In Latin America, the “sense of self
and self-interest” which pervaded U.S. culture from the country’s founding and
developed in Europe alongside the development of capitalism and struggles for political
democracy, did not emerge as a result of market society and wage labor. Instead, this
sensibility developed in struggles against the “extreme concentrations of economic and
political power,” the “retrenchment and fortification of extra-economic hierarchy and
privilege,” and the persistence of “coerced labor” grounded in “debt and vagrancy laws”
into the twentieth century.
68

67
Ibid., 74.
68
Ibid., 75.
45
U.S. reformers started from the moral ideal of the citizen and inherent virtue of
the American founding and early republic, but Latin Americans committed to the equality
and effective liberty of all people could not rely on such a founding myth. Nor, unlike
European left-wing partisans, did they have to contend with a fully-fledged laissez faire
liberalism, rooted in comprehensive doctrines and robust institutions. Instead, they
confronted with the pervasive abuse of state power to diminish equality and effective
liberty. Thus the Latin American versions of social democracy were on the leading edge
of promoting liberal political ideals in their respective countries, but without the need to
defend extensively against laissez faire claims and with the ability to forthrightly
embrace the state (and not the party) as an agent of the general will and common good As
a result, Latin American social democrats pioneered a far more holistic approach that
went beyond claims of restoring previously existing democracy with melioristic measures
or following a theory about the gradual, but eventual replacement of capitalism with
socialism.
During FDR’s presidency, U.S. reform politics moved closer toward to the
socialization of liberalism and democracy, and thus to the Latin American example, than
ever before, in both its embrace of social rights and its reckoning with its internal racial
diversity and inequality. U.S. social democrats even saw potential allies among their
Latin American counterparts. But with the rise of the Cold War, many U.S. liberals—
through their support for violent interventions in Latin America against apparently
46
Communist threats—purged concepts of social democracy indigenous to the region.
69

Even as many anti-communist U.S. liberals—epitomized by the Americans for
Democratic Action --vaunted British laborism as a model and U.S. foreign policy
tolerated, even encouraged the existence of socialist and social democratic parties in
Western Europe by protecting the region from Soviet military threat and by looking to
leftists as valuable competitors against Communists the various national elections.

Social Democracy as Scholarly Concept
Despite its linguistic invisibility in American political culture, social democracy is
an essential analytical category for the study of left-of-center politics during the twentieth
century. Ever since Richard Hofstadter referred to the New Deal’s introduction of a
“social-democratic tinge” to the American reform tradition, political scientists and
historians have debated the relationship between social democracy and the New Deal
Democratic order.
70
In the cross-national scholarly literature, the term “social
democracy,” has generally meant the systemic use of government to transform the
structures of capitalist society through counter-cyclical spending, planning, regulation of
business, and universal social services, backed by a well-organized, supportive political

69
Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004).
70
Richard Hofstadter, Age of Reform (New York: Knopf, 1955), 308 . I use the term “social democracy”
despite the fact that it never gained widespread currency in American political discourse. Communists
deployed “social democratic” as an epithet against moderate socialists and for a brief time, a group of
mostly Jewish Socialists dissatisfied with the militant leadership of Norman Thomas formed a “Social
Democratic Federation” to advance their own agenda. It would eventually merge back into the Socialist
Party during the Cold War, much diminished, and with little lasting impact on the body politic.
47
party—a model which became common in Western Europe during the mid-twentieth
century.
71

On one hand, David Greenstone argued that the alliance of the Democratic Party
and the AFL-CIO functioned as a partial approximation of European-style social
democracy. On the other hand, David Plotke stressed that social democracy was a minor
note, where the major chord of the New Deal was a distinct “progressive liberalism.”
George Lipsitz classified the welfare policies emerging from the New Deal as a case of
“racialized social democracy,” while Ira Katznelson (along with Mike Davis) contended
that the comparative “deficit” of social democracy in the U.S. stemmed largely from the
ethnoracial divisions between community at work, at home, and in leisure and religion.
72

Whether or not it makes sense to use social democracy as the measuring stick
against which to judge American social policy and political structure, it is undeniable that
social democratic tropes were a significant part of left-of-center American political
culture in the 1930s and 1940s and equally important, their articulation in the U.S. took
place as part of a circulation of political ideas across the world, touching on the fate of
nearly every continent, as part of the transnational Popular Front. In recognition of this
(as well as a search of a usable past amidst the contemporary hegemony of neoliberalism

71
This definition draws from Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Missed Opportunity?” and Ira
Katznelson, “Considerations on Social Democracy in the United States,” Comparative Politics 11 no. 1
(October 1978): 77-99.
72
J. David Greenstone, Labor in American Politics (New York: Knopf, 1969), 361; David Plotke, Building
a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping American Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1996). George Lipsitz, “The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: Racialized
Social Democracy and the ‘White’ Problem in American Studies,” American Quarterly 47 no. 3
(September 1995): 369-387; Ira Katznelson, “Considerations on Social Democracy in the United States,”
Comparative Politics 11, No. 1, (October 1978): 77-99.
48
and conservatism), historians, starting with Michael Denning’s The Cultural Front have
frequently applied the social democratic label to various movements operating in nexus
with the insurgent industrial unionism of the CIO.
Equally important, using the concept of social democracy allows for instructive
comparisons to the process of how such a socio-political orders can form. As Gosta
Esping-Anderson and Adam Przeworski have each argued, social democracy succeeded
in European countries only when it successfully yoked together the interests of the
working classes and the middle classes through universal, non-means tested social
benefits supplied by the state.
73
Given U.S. historians’ focus on the CIO and associated
movements as the prime carriers of social democratic ideology, there is an opportunity is
to examine the possibilities and realities of cross-class collaboration in the U.S. in the
process, which this dissertation does.
Although the New Deal Democratic order did not add up to an American version
of social democracy, the partisan political processes involved in making the New Deal
order and liberalizing the Democratic Party did involve processes that paralleled social
democratization in other countries. As the larger research project demonstrates, in both
Los Angeles and New York, socialists and liberals converged to back similar policies and
candidates. Socialist Upton Sinclair’s candidacy for governor as a Democrat and the
flood of New York City socialist voters into the American Labor Party to back Roosevelt
testify to the importance of socialism’s transmutation into social democracy. Moreover,

73
Gosta Esping-Anderson, Politics Against Markets: The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985); Adam Przeworski, Capitalism and Social Democracy (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1985).
49
much of the work of liberalizing the Democratic Party was carried out by middle-class
grassroots activists, in tandem with the CIO. During the era of the Popular Front, 1933-
1948, the movement itself was far more fluidly cross-class and cross-ethnoracial, while in
the 1950s predominantly white, middle-class liberals worked on their own terms, as
occasional partners with labor unions and communities of color. Nonetheless, in both
cases, the activism was socially diverse.

The Popular Front
Any discussion of progressives, liberals, and social democracy in the 1930s and
1940s must take into account the meaning and nature of the political formation known as
the “Popular Front.” The Popular Front has conventionally been viewed as Communist
International’s decision to make common cause with other left-of-center groups against
fascism, which in the U.S. meant coalescing with New Deal liberals, who in turn, they
story goes, accepted Communists’ support, between 1935 and 1939 and then again from
1941 to 1946. But as revisionists such as Michael Denning and Joseph Fronczak argue,
the Popular Front was equally, if not more significant as a grassroots cultural formation,
grounded in a shared set of commitments to social democratic policies, racial
egalitarianism, anti-fascism and anti-imperialism that united nearly the entire left-of-
center spectrum, encompassing independent radicals and socialists as well as New
Dealers and Communists. And as such a perspective, it originated prior to the
Communists’ 1935 official decision to join united fronts against fascism and lasted past
the chilling of relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. and the early repression of
50
Communists in the late 1940s. It drew upon a long-standing language and ideology of
left-liberal Americanism, elaborated this cultural strand in dialogue with immigrant-
Americans and African-Americans along with world-wide developments. Antifascists
from across the globe shared ideas, strategies, and tactics in a way that contributed to the
emergence of a Popular Front that was as much as grassroots transnational movement as
the outcome of international machinations.
Until recently, historians of the Popular Front (1934-1949) have stressed its
exceptionalism. It was uniquely cross-class, multi-racial, and forthright in its embrace of
Americanism. It combined these rare elements, historians have stressed, with the even
more unprecedented alliance of the Communist Party and New Deal liberals. However,
Doug Rossinow’s Visions of Progress presents a convincing argument that mid-twentieth
century was not an exceptional moment, but rather the culmination of a half-century of
fluidity between liberalism and the left, when the line between radical and reformer was
far from clear, where radicals pushed reformers to live up to their commitments, and
where reformers proffered ideals that radicals shared.
In addition to this compelling argument, Rossinow also usefully identifies two
threads of the movement for social democracy during the 1930s. The first, the farmer-
labor tradition, originated out of an earlier generation of Progressive activism that pushed
Sen. Robert La Follette’s 1924 third party presidential candidacy and was specifically
anchored in a largely white/Anglo milieu, most heavily in the Progressive Party of
Wisconsin and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (to a lesser extent in the Pacific
Northwest). The second, the new Popular Front movement, grew out of second-
51
generation immigrant, and multi-racial environment of the nation’s large cities. Its poles
were the New Deal administration and the Communist Party, although a wide range of
socialists and independent radicals participated as well. This movement concentrated in
places like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago.
74

In some places like Southern California, the two branches co-existed, uneasily at
times. Here the cosmopolitan branch was largely urban and multiracial in character,
drawing from all ethnic communities—Anglo, Jewish, Black, Mexican, Asian, and
European émigrés—and anchored in institutions such as the ACLU and CIO. The other
branch was heavily Anglo and populist in character, including the Townsend, Ham and
Eggs, Technocracy, Utopian Society – movements. Sinclair and Anglo socialists as were
a transitional, mediating force.
75

This dichotomy is quite useful and one that accurately maps basic differences
among progressives during the 1930s. However, this dichotomy also threatens to obscure
the significant links between the Farmer-Labor progressives and the Popular Front
progressives. In addition to key institutional connections, Popular Front progressives had
inherited substantial aspects of their rhetorical repertoire from Progressive-era political
discourse in the U.S. In particular, the Progressive Era bequeathed to Thirties-era
activists a powerful, yet brittle conception of political alignments that contributed
strongly to the form that the Popular Front took and to the shattering impact of the

74
Rossinow, Visions of Progress, Chapters Two and Three.
75
This assessment of the two branches of Southern California progressive politics derives from extensive
reading in the historical literature and archival research.
52
Popular Front’s dissolution. The dominant model of political process and social change
stressed an all-encompassing confrontation between “the people” and “the interests.”
This way of thinking discouraged well-thought out strategic thinking, in favor of
all-or-nothing, black-or-white modes of analysis. It inhibited progressives from waging a
long-term struggle to control the Democratic Party (as Goldwater conservatives would do
in the Republican Party), culminating in the institutionally disastrous decision to organize
the Progressive Party of 1948. It encouraged wholehearted rather than strategic alignment
with USSR in the struggle of democracy against fascism. It retarded attempts to link
progressive values to medium-term political alliances and policy goals, rather than the
fate of various nation-states. To an underappreciated extent, Popular Front rhetoric
extended, rather than fundamentally modified the worldview of older Progressives.

Roadmap to the Dissertation
The dissertation begins by chronicling the national “independent” “progressive”
“citizens” committees for Roosevelt’s election that emerged in 1932, 1936, and 1940.
Chapter One is significant in the larger project and for later chapters for several reasons.
It reveals the truly limited extent of nationally coordinated progressive involvement in
electoral politics during the 1930s. It demonstrates the degree to which progressives
operated under the aegis of FDR and his aides, failing to create independent structures,
which they could choose to extend beyond the campaign season and thus build their own
power. Examining a series of progressive committees backing the election of Franklin D.
Roosevelt as president, Chapter One demonstrates the incorporation of old-line
53
progressives into newer movements. One of their legacies was an aversion to partisan
politics. In combination with FDR’s desire to maintain control, and the country’s messy
patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments, this contributed to the limited
nature of each progressive committee. The consequences of the initiatives’ limited scope
are especially apparent in the case of California. The disappearance of the Progressive
National Committee after 1936 left a collection of leading liberals with no place to call
home and no plan of action. This episode, and others were a missed opportunities,
Chapter One suggests, to create a nationwide vehicle for progressives.
These “independent” committees for FDR provided the template for the creation
of the National Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC) in 1944 by the Congress
of Industrial Organization, which is the subject of Chapter Two. Because NCPAC
became the nation’s leading institution for progressives and eventually the core of the
Progressive Citizens of America and the Progressive Party, the structure, strategies, and
rhetorics of the 1930s groups would live on at the heart of Popular Front progressive
organizing, for better and worse. One critical legacy was a “the people versus the
interests” theory of social change, which encouraged progressives to underestimate the
popular support enjoyed by their political opponents. As a model of the political process,
it contributed to many progressives’ eventual decision to break with the Democrats and
found the Progressive Party of 1948.
The third and fourth chapter analyze the line of electoral and lobbying institutions
that materialized at the intersection of the “Cultural Front” and the Democratic Party.
Chapter Three considers the beginnings of the relationship between the producers and
54
public figures of mass culture, specifically those in its greatest center—Los Angeles—
and the American political system, and the Democratic Party in particular. In the story of
the progressive politicization of Hollywood and the eventual formation of the Motion
Picture Democratic Committee, it is possible to see how disparate, yet overlapping
communities converged on the ground and eventually coalesced into a new progressive
cohort, ready and primed for political action. Unraveling this process of relocation,
resettlement, and community formation is a way to demonstrate the contingency of
politics. In an era of mass media, it shows the continuing and vital importance of local
webs of relationships to the forging of mass cultural politics.
Chapter Four tells the story of the preeminent liberal electioneering and lobbying
organization that emerged at the intersection of Hollywood’s “Cultural Front” and the
Democratic Party—the Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC) and its successor—the
Hollywood branch of the Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and
Professions (HICCASP). This group was the mass cultural equivalent of the series of
national citizens committees chronicled in the previous chapters. Where those
organizations concentrated on face-to-face “community” organizing, the HDC sought to
mobilize the new “mass society” through methods associated with its paradigmatic
medium. Equally important, the circumstances of its birth—at the conjunction of a
Hollywood community increasingly inclined toward left-liberalism and a Southern
California partisan landscape in which the Democratic Party had rapidly become the
obvious, uncontested vehicle for left-liberal electoral politics—provides an important
point of reference to contrast and compare with the various national citizens committees
55
which first emerged in other places and under different circumstances. Despite the clear
ideological affinity with the local Democratic Party, an aversion to partisanship led to an
ambivalent, half-hearted embrace of the Democratic Party, which limited both the
Hollywood committee’s independence and their influence within the Democratic Party.
Likewise, persistent tensions and disputes over which scale—local, state, or national—
the organizations should emphasize in their drive to realize their ambitious vision,
undermined a focused, coherent approach to building power and creating durable
achievements.
Collectively the dissertation chapters draw on an array of organizational and
personal archival collections housed at the New York Public Library, the FDR
Presidential Library, UCLA, the Bancroft Library, Columbia University, the Tamiment
Library, the University of Iowa, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Southern
California Library for Social Studies and Research, and the California State Archives.

56
CHAPTER ONE
“INDEPENDENT” PROGRESSIVE COMMITTEES FOR ROOSEVELT AND
THE FAILURE TO ORGANIZE FOR THE LONG TERM, 1932-1940

Between the late nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth, liberals,
progressives, and leftists occupied a variety of political parties: Democratic, Republican,
Populists, Progressive, Bull-Moose, Farmer-Labor, Socialist. Which party often
depended on the year and the state in question. Many from the Populist Party of the late
1890s had entered the Democratic Party. Middle-class progressives before and after 1912
Progressive Party a home in the Republican Party. Some from each group broke away to
join the Famer-Labor ticket of Robert La Follette, Sr. in 1924. In industrial cities like
New York, electoral competition from immigrant-oriented Socialists and from
respectable, reformist Republican progressives pushed Democratic machines to embrace
liberal social welfare policies, as championed by rising politicians such as Robert
Wagner.
Although the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt would establish an enduring
place for progressives and liberals in the Democratic Party, this eventuality appeared
anything but certain from the perspective of 1932. Those on the liberal left lacked an
obvious vehicle for translating their visions into reality. Disgusted with the conservatism
of the Republican Party, they were quite wary of the Democratic Party as well. Some
backed FDR for President in 1932 and far more supported him in 1936, but their
institutional powerbase for mobilizing the public on a mass basis was anemic. On the
57
occasion of each presidential election, however, coalition-building and mobilization
efforts coalesced de novo, on an ad hoc basis.
Progressives suffered from the uneven development of socio-economic and
political landscapes. As in many places throughout the world, the top-down, massifying
nature of the era’s predominant media—film, radio, and metropolitan newspapers—
inclined politics world-wide toward larger-than-life national leaders. But the
fragmentation of the American political institutions, in almost every possible sense,
fostered a politics especially dependent on the symbolic, orchestrating and unifying
figures at the national level, most importantly, FDR. Social democratic presumptions,
shared across world, about the importance of the national state to rectifying the market’s
failures and inequities also focused attention on FDR as leader of the New Deal state.
And while left-progressives in the U.S. had long hoped for a third party of their own that
could drive a nation-wide political realignment, a competing and even more powerful
impulse in American progressivism was a conviction that government could best act on
behalf of the common good, if guided by disinterested, expert planners and technocrats.
76

All of these factors and more led progressives in general to expend less energy on
building a political party or other mass-based organization and more on creating better
government policies and new bureaucracies. FDR followed this state-centric path almost
completely, and throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he devoted his energy and political
capital toward enacting new government policies rather than building the Democratic

76
Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and
Hitler's Germany, 1933 – 1939, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006); Daniel Rodgers, Atlantic
Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998).
58
Party. His attempt in 1938 to purge the Democratic Party of conservative elements by
intervening in primary elections backfired amidst his controversial Supreme Court
packing plan and the economy’s slide back into recession.
77
Not entirely without merit,
FDR’s emphasis on policy and state-building, rather than political transformation and
party-building has occupied the lion’s share of historiographical space. Scholars such as
Sidney Milkis and Alan Brinkley rightly highlight the importance of this emphasis and
how it played out in the practice of policy formation and state-building. But to focus only
on the dominant thrust of FDR’s efforts obscures the agency of grassroots progressives
and how their own cultural frameworks, combined with effects of FDR’s less studied,
lower-profile political choices, to limit their own power.
78

This chapter takes that less common path. It focuses on the periodic emergence of
groups focused on rallying traditionally independent, Republican, and non-organization
Democratic progressives behind Roosevelt in 1932, 1936, and 1940. These committees, I
show, remained unconnected in any formal sense to the infrastructure of local and state
politics. FDR and the New Deal, of course, served as a rallying cry for progressives
across the country, and the President would even endorse certain candidates, but a
coherent, national political organization there was not. Progressive aversion to

77
Susan Dunn, Roosevelt's Purge: How FDR Fought to Change the Democratic Party, (Cambridge:
Belknap Press, 2010).
78
Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System
Since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New
Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York: Knopf, 1995); Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and Its
Discontents (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).

59
partisanship in general and their reluctance to see the Democratic Party as a vehicle for
reform specifically, limited their attempts to co-opt that party, even as the Republican
Party seemed less amenable to their influence than ever before and the Socialist Party
faded from relevance. From the other side, FDR’s own reluctance to establish an alternate
power center led him to use his close associates to steer the putatively independent
committees from behind the scenes and to preempt their evolution into a permanent and
truly independent organization. Each mobilization set a template for the next election’s
endeavor, shaping the composition, method, and structure of the eventual progressive
effort to co-opt the national Democratic Party would take in the 1940s. The lack of
sustained organizing over and across election cycles, when combined with the
weaknesses of their approach, limited the progressives’ success in this endeavor.
This chapter reveals the truly limited extent of nationally coordinated progressive
involvement in electoral politics during the 1930s. It demonstrates the degree to which
progressives operated under the aegis of FDR and his aides, failing to create independent
structures, which they could choose to extend beyond the campaign season and thus build
their own power. The consequences of the initiatives’ limited scope are especially
apparent in the case of California. The disappearance of the Progressive National
Committee after 1936 left a collection of leading liberals with no place to call home and
no plan of action. This episode, and others were a missed opportunities, Chapter One
suggests, to create a nationwide vehicle for progressives.

60
The National Progressive League of 1932
The first of the “independent” progressive committees was the National
Progressive League to Support Franklin D. Roosevelt for President, was established in
the fall of 1932, under the leadership of noted Republican Sen. George Norris—the dean
of Congressional progressives—and Donald R. Richberg. “The League's national
committee included Edward Costigan, Ray Stannard Baker, Bronson Cutting, Robert La
Follette, Jr., Amos Pinchot, Claude Bowers, Bainbridge Colby, Josephus Daniels,
Clarence Darrow, Felix Frankfurter, Henry A. Wallace, Frank Murphy, and Arthur M.
Schlesinger. A Western Committee of the group was chaired by Harold L. Ickes, and
included agricultural leaders from the Midwest such as Henry A. Wallace and George
Peek.”
79

This group had emerged out of old-line progressives’ reaction to the Great
Depression and their disappointment with the tardy, half-hearted measures President
Hoover undertook. A March 1931 conference organized by Senators Norris, Costigan,
Cutting, La Follette, and Wheeler sought a progressive unity platform around economic
recovery, but explicitly disclaimed any interest in promoting any political party, whether
Democratic, Republican, or otherwise. As the 1932 presidential election neared, Norris
saw the prospect of nominating a progressive Republican alternative to Hoover as nil, and

79
Donald R. McCoy, “The Progressive National Committee of 1936,” The Western Political Quarterly 9,
no. 2 (June 1956): 456.
61
so consequently hoped that Roosevelt, progressive Governor of New York, would
become the Democratic candidate.
80

In a May 1932 memo, FDR aide Frank Walsh sketched the outlines of what
would eventually materialize as the National Progressive League to Support Franklin D.
Roosevelt for President. Supporters of FDR in both major parties, he wrote, believed that
such an organization could swing the Presidential primaries, especially in the West and
aid FDR during the general election as well. The emphasis was on electing FDR as the
Democratic Presidential nominee through a multi-pronged strategy. The group would try
to abolish the Democratic Party rule that required two thirds of delegate votes to choose
the nominee because that requirement enabled a “reactionary coalition” to defeat the
“will of the majority.” The other part was to analyze and publicize the records of all
Democratic candidates with a particular focus on “domestic economic issues.” In the
Walsh’s words, “red herring” issues such as Prohibition, the League of Nations and the
World Court only confused and divided voters. The emphasis on domestic economic
issues was a legacy of the populist and progressive movements, but it had roots, this
episode shows, in electoral politics, and Roosevelt’s need to minimize the salience of
ethnocultural and international issues.
81

Loosely modeled on similar groups from past campaigns, Walsh suggested the
group center on an executive committee of nine men and women who were leaders

80
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 455-6.
81
Frank Walsh, Memorandum, p. 1, 5 March 1932, Box 35, Folder DNC Corresp. 1932 March, Frank P.
Walsh Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. [Hereafter, Walsh
Papers.]
62
among Progressive Democrats, and include a national committee with one representative
per state, who had the “standing and ability to arouse and organize progressive sentiment
within their state,” in part by disseminating the group’s own literature. The group would
consist only of Democrats until after the successful nomination of FDR because as Norris
himself warned, charges that Republicans were attempting to sway the Democratic
nomination would be politically dangerous.
82

Such a group never materialized, but once Roosevelt clinched the nomination,
debate about the possibilities of an organization to rally progressives of all parties and
especially Republicans, to FDR’s banner, began in earnest. Basil Manly, one of Frank
Walsh’s close associates, coordinated much of the planning, soliciting suggestions via
written correspondence. Sen. Norris thought the organization ought to be led by
“Republicans of the Progressive wing,” and called the Roosevelt Progressive-Republican
League. Richberg was his choice to “head the movement” and he offered the help of his
public relations person, Judson King, with writing copy for literature and publicity. In
Norris’ estimation, Roosevelt could best gin up support among Progressives by making a
stand for the public generation of electric power, an old yet persistent issue for many
progressives.
83

82
Frank Walsh, Memorandum, 5 March 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 35, Folder DNC Corresp 1932 March,
pp. 2-3.
83
George Norris to Basil Manly, 1 September 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive
League for FDR Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9.

63
Harold Ickes offered a counter-point to Norris’ suggestions. He wrote that the
proposed organization only made sense if it could gather many “progressives of
recognized national standing.” A group anchored only in locally-prominent progressives
could backfire. Ickes reasoned that the organization ought to be physical located in the
offices of Democratic National Committee, but operate under its own leadership, with its
own methods. He cited the progressive group in the 1916 Hughes Presidential campaign,
with which he had been involved, as a model for this type of relationship.
84

In the same vein, Donald Richberg argued that “the expense of separate
organizations is seldom justified by the results.” To counter the endorsement of Hoover
by “former progressives of the more conservative type,” he recommended that the
Democratic National Committee quietly compile a roster of leading progressives from
both major parties who supported FDR. Close to Election Day, the group would issue a
statement listing the signatories by state, and declare that they had “always regarded
progressive politics as more important than party” and were therefore endorsing FDR as
the only representative of “liberal thought.” Holding the statement until late in the
campaign would prevent Republicans from issuing anywhere close to the same number of
endorsements from progressive figures.
85

84
Harold Ickes to Basil Manly, 31 August 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive League
for FDR Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9.
85
Donald R. Richberg to Basil Manly, 3 September, 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive
League for FDR Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9.

64
Although Basil Manly coordinated correspondence and would eventually take on
an official staff position with the NPL, Frank Walsh, with no official title or official role
whatsoever, remained the key visionary and strategic decision-making force behind the
NPL’s formation and operations. During a trip away from the East Coast during the
middle of September, Walsh had his aides such as Carl Beck continue discretely boosting
his plan for the new organization.
86
In a letter to Manly, for instance, Beck pushed Ickes’
plan to locate the NPL in the DNC, for instance.
87

Despite this position, Walsh conciliated toward Norris’ anti-partisan sentiments.
“I thoroughly agree with your conclusions as to the evils of partisanship,” Walsh wrote in
a letter replying to Norris on September 19, 1932. Given that Norris had approved the
plans submitted by Manly, action needed to commence immediately. In addition to his
gesture against partisanship, Walsh stroked Norris’ ego and affirmed his political
perspective: “With you as Chairman of the National Committee for the present campaign,
I am confident that it will not only be of incalculable aid in the defeat of Hoover, but
have a persuasive voice in the enactment of progressive legislation and a great aid to
Roosevelt in the struggle with reactionaries in both parties which will be inevitable, if we
are to accomplish anything.” He also raised Norris’ hopes of broader political
realignment by raising the prospect of the NPL’s lasting influence, without making any

86
Carl Beck to Walsh, 13 September 1932, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive League for FDR
Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9 Walsh Papers; “Walsh Memorandum for Mr. Manly and Mr. Niles,”
17 October 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive League for FDR, Correspondence, 1932
Oct 11 – 18.
87
Carl Beck to Manly, 14 September 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive League for
FDR Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9.
65
firm organizational commitments beyond the immediate election. “I think the proposed
Progressive League can be made a most impressive one, with repercussions far beyond
1932,” he wrote.
88

On September 26, 1932, the NPL’s secretary Frederic C. Howe issued a press
release for the morning papers that announced the new organization’s existence, mission
and supporters. The National Progressive League would be “non-partisan in policy” and
its activities would focus only on “economic issues.” The leadership and the mailing list
of the new organization drew heavily from an older generation of western and
Midwestern Progressives, predominantly Anglo-Saxon in ethnicity, and with only slight
reflection of the more diverse set of progressive leaders who emerged during the
preceding decade. Headquartered in Washington and New York, the only Californian on
the committee was Superior Court Judge Francis J. Heney from the Bay Area, who had
prosecuted the 1909 San Francisco graft cases, which positioned him as a leader of the
original California progressives (and which launched Hiram Johnson’s political career.
Most of the initial supporters in California were also from its northern half. Of the
eighteen from the Los Angeles region, there were many women but the names, without
exception, were Anglo-Saxon, including no ethnoracial minorities. Addresses were
concentrated near downtown, in Pasadena, and extended suburban towns of the San

88
Walsh to Norris, 19 September 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl. Progressive League for FDR
Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9.

66
Gabriel Valley and the South Bay. No one from Hollywood, the Westside or East L.A.
was present, nor were any people of Jewish, Asian, Latino, or African descent included.
89

New York City was represented far more heavily among the NPL’s leadership
and supporters, and its social diversity was a bit more pronounced. Women accounted for
a large percentage of the list; most notable were such leaders of the settlement house and
social work movements as Mary Simkovitch and Lillian Wald. Women leaders of the
trade union movement included Fannie Cohn and Rose Schneiderman. Future editor of
The Nation, Freda Kirchewey, future Brooklyn Borough President Raymond Ingersoll,
and author Hellen Keller numbered among the other notable names. Lists of supporters,
leaders, and potential funders in New York included a smattering of Jewish names
alongside the predominantly Anglo ones.
The organization was immensely ambitious in its scope and yet lacked anywhere
close to the time and resources necessary to realize its broad ambitions. Less than three
weeks before the election, Walsh was urging the NPL’s two paid staffers, Manly and
David K. Niles, to begin immediately compiling the names of two prominent supporters
for each congressional district throughout every state, “except for the far south.”
90

Millions of citizens were hungry for a principled progressive approach to politics
and government. For the practical reason of winning election, FDR would need to
connect with these voters. One of Walsh’s long-time acquaintances from Kansas City

89
September 26 Press Release for Morning Papers, 26 September 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl
Progressive League 1932 Press Releases and Membership Lists.
90
“Walsh Memorandum for Mr. Manly and Mr. Niles,” 17 October 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder
Natl. Progressive League for FDR Correspondence 1932 October 11 - 18.
67
reported in early September that Norman Thomas had recently attracted 3,000 to hear
him speak, more than ten times the crowd he garnered in 1928.
91
The leadership of the
Democratic Party realized the consequent need to attract left-of-center votes. In the early
fall, an internally circulated campaign bulletin tabulated several newspaper polls to show
how progressive Republicans were switching to the Democratic ticket in droves. The
swing among 1928 Republications varied regionally, but seemed poised to peak at more
than 59% among the states bordering the Pacific.
92

Despite its significant connections to the Democratic Party, the National
Progressive League remained quasi-autonomous from the party’s organization at Norris’
insistence. He wanted to prevent the Democratic Party from engulfing the progressive
movement, and in particular, the many progressive Republican and non-partisan
progressive clubs that embodied the movement across the country. Rather than co-opt the
Democratic Party, then, Norris sought to mobilize ordinarily Republican and non-partisan
voters behind a liberal Democrat on a one-time basis.
93

The NPL’s presence in California was initially a great success, but in a fashion
soon to be repeated, its mobilization left behind little lasting infrastructure. From San

91
H. S. Julian to Walsh, 7 September 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder: Natl Progressive League for
FDR, Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9.

92
“Special Campaign Bulletin #1 – Minute Men of Democratic Party,” Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Natl
Progressive League for FDR Correspondence 1932 September 1 – 9. To clarify, 59% of people who had
voted Republican in 1928 were poised to vote for Roosevelt in 1932.
93
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 456-457. Also of note, the infiltration and cooptation of the
Republican Party is what Theodore Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson what accomplished in their decades
several decades prior.
68
Francisco, NPL leader Francis Heney wrote to Walsh “that the California meetings you
arranged were the most successful of Senator Norris’ tour.” Reportedly, the Los Angeles
visit included “a band at the [train] station, a parade to the hotel and a wonderful meeting
at the auditorium with more people outside than could be packed into the hall.”
94

Heney’s wife, he wrote, “deserve[d] all the credit for the success of the [Hiram]
Johnson and Norris meetings in Los Angeles.” After resigning from the Republican State
Central Committee, she devoted her considerable intelligence and energy to the NPL and
Roosevelt’s campaign. The major obstacle to the group’s success in Southern California,
Heney noted, was the attempt by John Elliot, the manager of Sen. William McAdoo’s
campaign to co-opt the NPL into supporting McAdoo. This turn would have caused
trouble because the Senate race divided backers of the FDR-Garner ticket three ways
between supporters of evangelical firebrand Bob Shuler, career politician Tallant Tubbs,
and the Democratic incumbent McAdoo. This divide was a testament to the diversity of
progressive opinion and to Roosevelt’s capacious appeal.
95

Although the leaders of the League retained an important place in FDR’s
administration, the League itself disbanded after the election. Initially there was some
debate and correspondence about maintaining the organization. Heney, for instance,
opined that the NPL might live on “as a non-partisan body and as an open forum for the
development and propaganda of Progressive ideas in Government and participation in

94
Judge Francis Heney to Walsh, 19 November 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder: Natl Progressive
League for FDR, Correspondence 1932 Nov 13 – 30.
95
Heney to Walsh, 28 November 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder: Natl Progressive League for FDR
Correspondence 1932 Nov 13 – 30.
69
national government throughout out the United States.” Sen. Hiram Johnson had hoped it
would remain a state and national progressive Republican organization, but Heney
cautioned that the group’s influence in the 1932 campaign stemmed from its actually
non-partisan stance and from the large number of progressive Democrats who joined,
especially in Southern California.
96

In a letter to Executive Chairman Donald Richberg, Basil Manly suggested that a
small initial meeting of important players, such as Ickes, Walsh, Melvin D. Hildreth,
Norris, Johnson, Costigan, Cutting, La Follete and other key leaders should formulate
plan sustaining the organization. A larger public conference could then convene in
December or early January to begin building the organization on a broad base so that it
could effectively sway personnel and policy in the new presidential administration. While
the New York office was shuttered in favor of a single Washington, DC headquarters,
Manly wrote to Ickes, that in anticipation of a permanent organization, letters had already
been sent to more than 2,000 progressives in various states asking them to submit names
of a “reliable man and woman” in each Congressional District.
97

Norris and Ickes were especially interested in maintaining the NPL’s active
existence, but it succumbed, according to Norris, to dissension among progressive
leaders. Walsh made no move to establish the group on a permanent basis. Throughout

96
Heney to Walsh, 28 November 1932, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder: Natl Progressive League for FDR
Correspondence 1932 Nov. 13 – 30. Hiram Johnson had served as Theodore Roosevelt’s running mate in
the 1912 presidential election.
97
Manly to Richberg, 7 November 1932; Manly to Ickes, 7 November 1932, Box 36, Walsh Papers, Folder
Natl. Progressive League for FDR Correspondence 1932 Nov. 13 – 30.

70
early 1933, Norris, however, kept talk alive in the press about the importance of
maintaining local non-Democratic progressive club activities, especially among
Republicans.
98
Nothing definite materialized, however, until the 1936 presidential
campaign, when Walsh once again took the lead.

The Progressive National Committee of 1936
Preparations for the NPL’s successor began in late January of 1936 when the
President and Donald Richberg simultaneously, but independent of one another, began to
correspond with key individuals. Initially, Roosevelt delegated the task of re-establishing
the Progressive League to Interior Secretary Harold Ickes with the support Senators
George Norris and Hiram Johnson , but by the summer, Frank P. Walsh assumed the role
in Ickes’ stead.
99

Why the switch? The available evidence points to Roosevelt’s desire to direct the
project covertly through the Democratic National Committee, so that he could exercise
full control over it. In the early summer, FDR communicated directly with both Walsh
and DNC chair Jim Farley and instructed them to collaborate with each other. At the
same time, they sought to divert Donald Richberg and Melvin D. Hildreth, who were
eager to re-establish the National Progressive League again. The Democratic leaders
peddled the line that outreach to progressives would begin only after the Republican

98
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 456-457.
99
Ibid., 457; Roscoe D. Conkling to Walsh, 5 September 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Walsh, Frank
P. 1864-1939 Exec Chm. PNC Correspondence 1936 September 1-18.
71
Convention and that this outreach would center on an independent meeting led by
Senators George Norris and Robert La Follette, Jr. In Walsh’s words, the message was
that “this ‘Progressive’ organization would have no connection with the Democratic
Party or the DNC, but would be run entirely on its own resources and in an independent
line.” If Richberg and Hildreth learned of FDR’s actual plans, Walsh wrote to Farley, the
“suspicion” might grow that the “‘progressives’ movement” was in fact “sponsored by
you and the DNC.”
100

As a life-long Republican, Ickes would not have been the logical choice for an
ostensibly independent organization actually coordinated by Democratic Party operatives.
Likewise, FDR chose Senator La Follette to serve as chairman, against Ickes’ preference
for Senator Nye as a Republican who led the anti-interventionist political forces. FDR
and Walsh were less concerned with choosing the best possible public face of the
organization and more with choosing a good public face who was already aligned with
them strategically, in terms of vision and existing relationships.
However, as a result of FDR’s choice of La Follette, both Nye and California
Senator Hiram Johnson were reluctant to join the new endeavor. Even George Norris
hesitated to participate initially. As Senator La Follette prepared for the organizing
conference in Chicago, Norris hesitated to sign the conference call because he knew his
poor health would prevent him from attending. And in turn, his reluctance planted seeds
of doubt in the minds of figures such New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. When

100
Handwritten Note, FDR to James Farley, 8 May 1936 and Walsh to Farley, 4 June 1936, Walsh Papers,
Box 36, Folder: Walsh, Frank P. 1864-1939 Exec Chm PNC Correspondence 1936, May-June-July.
72
informed of the effects of his reticence, Norris agreed to serve as Honorary Chairman of
the new group, now termed the Progressive National Committee (PNC).
101
Minnesota
Governor Floyd Olson of the Farmer-Labor Party, who had flirted with the notion of a
national third party, lent his support to the new organization as well.
In addition to La Follette, Norris, Olson and La Guardia, Senator Elmer Benson
(of Minnesota’s Farmer-Labor Party), Senator Homer T. Bone of Washington State,
Adolf Berle, and Edward Keating (the editor of Labor) collectively issued the call for the
Chicago Conference, scheduled to begin September 11, 1936. Over one hundred leaders
from across the country attended, including “Governors La Follette and Petersen;
Senators Black, Benson, Schwellenbach and La Follette; twelve representatives in
Congress; twenty-seven labor leaders, including John L. Lewis, Sidney Hillman, Philip
Murray, and A. F. Whitney; farm leaders; various other state and local officials.”
102

Collectively, they promised to contribute ten thousand dollars to the committee.
The attendees unanimously agreed that the on-going process of political
realignment had pushed reactionaries and the Republican Party into each other’s arms.
Electoral division among progressives, such as the William Lemke’s presidential
candidacy on the populism-inflected Union Party ticket, would only bolster the forces of
reaction. Voting for Roosevelt was the clear and obvious choice for progressive citizens,
according to the consensus.
103

101
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 458.
102
Ibid., 459-460.
103
Ibid., 461-462.
73
There was some disagreement, however, over how progressives ought to relate to
the Democratic Party in general. Some attendees wanted to enter a formal relationship of
some sort with the Party, but others, led by Representative Thomas R. Amlie of
Wisconsin pushed back and won the day. Amelie contended that the Party was laced with
elements opposed to progressivism; while it might serve as a temporary vehicle under
Roosevelt’s leadership, progressives had to maintain their own organization in
anticipation of the time when the Party inevitably retreated from its embrace of
progressives.
104
This argument seemed to overlook the fact that the organization had been
formed less than two months before the election as an explicit attempt to re-elect the
President, with no explicit plans for maturing into a permanent organization. The most
pungent irony and most glaring contradiction was that Democratic operatives, in fact, led
the group from behind the scenes.
Although reluctant to join with the Democratic Party, the Committee in practice
had little independence from Roosevelt’s administration. Despite the existence of a
nineteen-person executive committee, the group’s chairman, FDR aide Frank P. Walsh,
wielded the balance of power, just as in 1932. Based on the bylaws, rules and regulations
established on September 26, the executive committee chairman retained authority over
spending and appointments to all of the organization’s committees. Liaison to the

104
Ibid., 460.
74
President went through aides Stanley High and Thomas Corcoran; and when the PNC
aired radio broadcasts, FDR had the opportunity to vet them personally.
105

Five weeks after their initial meeting and only one week before the election, the
executive committee continued to deliberate over precisely how to straddle the partisan
landscape. The PNC’s leadership sought to avoid creating the “impression” they their
organization was “an adjunct of the DNC” and yet also followed La Follette’s admonition
to co-ordinate efforts, whenever there was potential for conflict. When PNC speakers
were scheduled in a town not their own, the local Democratic Party were supposed to be
notified. And the DNC was to receive prior notice of the schedule of radio times
purchased by the PNC and the general nature of the programs planned for those times.
Yet publicity about these events was to come exclusively from the PNC, so as to avoid
any appearance of co-ordination or endorsement.
106

Debating Strategies for State and Local Organizing
In addition to its nationally coordinated efforts, the PNC worked to create state
and local committees. After the September 26 Executive Committee meeting, a press
release touted a spate of efforts to organize State affiliates in New York, Massachusetts,
California, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. But at the Executive Committee meeting itself, the

105
Ibid., 462-463; Minutes of the PNC Executive Committee Meeting, 30 October 1936, p. 3, Walsh
Papers, Box 37, Folder PNC Minutes.
106
“Confidential Memorandum of Discussions on Policy at Special Meeting of the Executive Committee of
the PNC Held Saturday night and Sunday, Sept. 26 and 27,” 28 September 1936, p. 2, Walsh Papers. Box
36, Folder: Miscellaneous Memos [2].
75
leadership vigorously debated how to organize and how to position their affiliates in
relation to local political alignments that varied tremendously among regions and
jurisdictions. An ingrained tradition of anti-partisanship among Progressives dating to the
late 19
th
century combined with the practical difficulties of negotiating the patchwork of
partisan configurations to limit the scope of the PNC’s efforts to reshape the political
system.
If Walsh was the executive power behind the PNC, La Follette, in his role as
chairman, guided the organization’s strategic positioning. At the September 26 Executive
Committee meeting, those present—Davidson, James H. Causey, Judson King, M. Niles,
E. R. Haig—largely deferred to the vocal lead of La Follette (and secondarily, to that of
Walsh).
107
At another executive committee meeting, Walsh noted that he spoke with La
Follette every day and received his approval for all major plans.
108

At the September 26 meeting, the two of them laid out the strategic dilemma
confronting the PNC very clearly. Support of FDR could only be on a non-partisan basis,
they insisted. In La Follette’s words, the PNC “will have to maintain that position
because otherwise we will be involved in a thousand different local political situations.”
The precipitating issue was the relationship between the PNC and the Labor Non-Partisan
League’s New York affiliate, the American Labor Party. Whereas elsewhere
collaboration between Labor’s Non-Partisan League (LNPL) and the PNC was feasible,

107
“Confidential Memorandum of Discussions on Policy at Special Meeting of the Executive Committee
of the PNC Held Saturday night and Sunday, Sept. 26 and 27,” 28 September 1936, p. 1, Box 36, Folder:
Miscellaneous Memos [2], Walsh Papers.
108
Minutes, Regular Meeting of the Executive Committee of the PNC, 7 October 1936, p. 2, Box 37,Folder
PNC Minutes, Walsh Papers.
76
the partisan form of the LNPL in NY meant that direct support would set an undeniably
partisan precedent. “Any effort to direct people to the ALP ticket would immediately
involve [the PNC] in propositions to get into other congressional districts and there
would be no place to draw the line,” La Follette surmised.
109

Yet, even beyond the taboo on partisanship, La Follette worried that state
committees could inadvertently disrupt important alliances. He insisted that the group “do
absolutely nothing about any state organizations unless [he was] consulted,” except for
the states of New York, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and Nebraska, where the political
alignments were well-known and relatively simple to navigate. He was “apprehensive
about making the wrong moves in the States.”
110

There was not enough time to investigate the situation in each state. So in most
cases, one could only speculate about the political cleavages with the potential to derail
any local PNC activity. He cited the example of Colorado, where he warily eyed a
“knock-down fight” dividing the Democratic Party and the independent progressive
movement. He “would not touch Colorado” unless a half dozen key figures “assured us
that our presence would do good, not harm.”
111

109
“Confidential Memorandum of Discussions on Policy at Special Meeting of the Executive Committee of
the PNC Held Saturday night and Sunday, Sept. 26 and 27,” 28 September 1936, p. 2, Walsh Papers. Box
36, Folder: Miscellaneous Memos [2].
110
Ibid., p. 3
111
Ibid., p. 3.
77
The leadership was keen to avoid over-involvement in state and local affairs for
other reasons. Again, the issue was most pressing in New York State, as other local
organizations contacted the PNC headquarters with an eye toward cooperation. La
Follette acquiesced to a joint meeting with the ALP at Madison Square Garden, on the
condition that the publicity and speaker make clear that the PNC’s support only
concerned FDR and he assented to taking over some events at the Academy of Music in
Brooklyn as long as the PNC truly controlled the event.
112
But if more extensive efforts
were desirable in the state, a state committee ought to exist independently in order to
insulate the national body from “all liability and responsibility.” A locally autonomous
structure “would be more advisable than having the National HQ constantly having to
decide whether we would recognize Bill Smith’s org in the Bronx or Tom Smith’s
somewhere else,” according to La Follette.
113

Moreover, he was wary of lavishing too large a share of PNC resources on the
state. The Democratic Party, he noted, had “recognized New York as a weak spot and
was concentrating a lot of their effort and attention there.” And Sen. Wagner was making
innumerable speeches around the state, in service of the President’s reelection. There
were “other weak spots in the country” where the PNC “could assist, if [its] finances
permitted, which were not receiving the attention that New York State is from the DNC.
Funding some local events would set the expectation that the national group would

112
Ibid., pp. 3-4.
113
Ibid., p. 3.
78
always pay for them and deprive local people of any incentive to raise their own
funds.”
114

As the group considered the situation in New York, Walsh noted that an already
organized committee in Massachusetts was the template for creating state affiliates. And
Niles made the case that the people who attended the September 11 Conference in
Chicago could take responsibility for creating their own affiliates and raising their own
funds. The national committee could not afford to support those groups, which lacked the
native strength to get off the ground themselves.
115

Progressive State Committees in Action
By the end of September, progressive committees began to form in various states.
The California Conference of Liberals and Progressives took place in Fresno on October
18, 1936. Called to order by George T. Davis, a prominent San Francisco labor attorney,
the convention featured speeches by Rudolph Spreckels, a famous liberal recently
returned to California, Rep. Byron Scott of Long Beach, Judges Robert Kenny and Lester
Roth of Los Angeles, and San Francisco labor leader George Kidwell.
116

114
Ibid., p. 6.
115
Ibid., p. 7.
116
Press Release of Convention at Hotel Fresno, 18 October 1936, Box 36, Folder: Press Releases CA
Conference of Liberals and Progressives, Walsh Papers. Spreckels had was the youngest son of wealthy
California and Hawaii-based sugar magnate Claus Spreckles and was involved with numerous progressive
efforts in the California, beginning with the leadership of delegation to President Teddy Roosevelt about
San Francisco’s graft the day before the great earthquake of 1906.
79
Davis chaired the Progressive State Committee (PSC), Kenny and Kidwell served
as vice-chairmen, and Harry Braverman (a Jewish businessman from East L.A.) acted as
the Secretary for Southern California. Davis served on the national executive committee
of the PNC, although his input was mostly limited to attending one meeting in New York
on October 30.
117
In a letter to Frank Walsh, Davis noted the group’s “surprising
advances” and the remarkable collection of influential activists included on the
letterhead. The “movement” had “great possibilities” and although the participants were
anxious to fight for Roosevelt, the “real interest” of “practically everyone” was in the
group’s “future possibilities.”
118

Under the PSC’s auspices, Raymond Haight and Sen. J. C. Garrison broadcast a
program over radio station KHJ in Los Angeles. Rep. Byron Scott and Rabbi Lewis
Brown, author of This Believing World, broadcast a program together over L.A. and San
Francisco’s most popular radio stations, KFI and KFRC.
119
Rep. Scott took the lead in
organizing activities in Southern California generally.
The PNC tapped into a well of enthusiasm for FDR nearly everywhere it went. In
Los Angeles, old-line progressive newspaperman J. W. Travers offered his services
directly to the PNC headquarters and began publishing a newspaper of his own, “The
Rooseveltian” in late June 1936. In New York, in particular, several small groups of

117
George Davis to Walsh, October 22, 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder: Walsh, Frank P. 1864-1939,
Exec Chm, PNC, Correspondence, 1936.
118
Ibid.
119
Davis to La Follette, 2 November 1936, Box 36, Folder Nov 10-27, Walsh Papers; Davis to Robert La
Follette, 2 November 1936, Box 36, Folder: Walsh, Frank P. 1864-1939, Exec Chm. PNC Correspondence
1936 Nov 10-27, Walsh Papers.
80
people came forward to volunteer their services and to brag about their campaign work
for FDR. Two men organized a Republicans for Roosevelt group, while M. J. Patterson
and John Colgin formed the Progressive Party for the Re-Election of FDR. Patterson and
Colgin reported that their endeavor had reached 50,000 people across the city, especially
through professional associations of their fellow engineers and other skilled professionals
and craftsmen.
120

New York Organization
Unlike every other state, the PNC in New York State also had city and county
affiliates. These were all “independent, but coordinated closely.”
121
By early October,
committees had been established in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and
Westchester County, each with a chairman and an organizational meeting in the works. In
Brooklyn and the Bronx, the chairmen were Jews. In Manhattan and Queens, WASPs
chaired the committees and in Westchester an Irishman, Ed Kennedy, headed up the
efforts. There was a strong contrast to the regular Democratic organization,
122
which was
almost entirely Irish in the five boroughs of New York City, with the exception of Italians
in the little Italy section of Manhattan.

120
The Rooseveltian, 27 June 1936, Box 36, Walsh Papers. John Colgin to Walsh, 6 July 1936, Folder:
Chicago Conf 1936, Box 36, Walsh Papers.
121
Minutes, Regular Meeting of the Executive Committee of the PNC, 7 October, 1936, Box 37, Folder
PNC Minutes, Walsh Papers, p. 5.
122
Minutes of the Proceedings, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Chicago Conf 1936 Reports, Radio
Broadcasts, etc.
81
As noted above, initially the PNC headquarters was very involved with local New
York activity. PNC leaders participated in a joint meeting with the American Labor Party
at Madison Square Garden and took over several events at the Academy of Music in
Brooklyn. Even though La Follette advised limiting the use of PNC resources in New
York, activity was intense. The national speakers bureau helped to book meetings and
speakers for the Greenwich Village Historical Society, the Bronx YMCA, the Talk of the
Town Club, Inc., Columbia University, the University Settlement House, Henry Street
Settlement House, Madison House, Greenwich House, and Youth House. And the bureau
sought to arrange showings of a 16-millimeter motion picture at various places around
the city.
123

A total of eighty meetings took place at schools, churches and other civic groups
and reached an estimated 350,000 people. Meetings in Westchester were broadcast on the
WEVD and W2XR radio stations. A Carnegie Hall rally attracted 3,500 attendees inside
and another 6,000 listening outside through speakers.
124

125

126

123
Report on Departmental Activities, 7 October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Chicago Conf 1936.
124
Untitled document[ Minutes of the Executive Committee of the Progressive National Committee] , 30
October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37, Folder PNC Minutes.
125
August 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder: Walsh, Frank P. 1864-1939, Exec Chm PNC
Correspondence.
126
Memo for Mr. Walsh by RGS, 22 August 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Oct 28-31; Walsh to
Henry Moskovitz, Chairman of the Foreign Lang Division, Independent Citizens Committee for Re-
Election of Herbert H. Lehman, 29 October 1936, Walsh Papers.
82
A Wearing Apparel Division of the Businessmen’s League for FDR even formed
in New York. Their statement, printed in large type on a poster, defended the legal and
orderly process by which Roosevelt “saved the nation economically.” Playing on their
elevated class status, they proclaimed, “As businessmen, we have an important personal
stake in the perpetuation of a free government. We would be the first to suffer from any
abridgement of our liberties. And we say, that in all honesty and in all fairness, there is no
basis for fear.”
127

Funding and Budget
Although led by a New Dealer and fronted by the older generation of
progressives, a majority of the PNC’s funding came from labor unions. Indeed, John
Lewis’ United Mine Workers gave $35,000, revealing an otherwise hidden parallel to the
UMW’s crucial backing of Labor’s Non-Partisan League. All other unions combined
contributed $5,500, while the largest personal contribution was $4,000 from the mother
of Bronson Cutting, late progressive Republican Senator from New Mexico. Large gifts
of between $100 and $1,000 came from New Deal officials Thomas Corcoran, Ben
Cohen, and Adolf A. Berle, and progressive politicians Hjalmar Petersen, Philip La
Follette, and Maury Maverick.
128
Other notable contributors included industrialists
Maurice Davidson of New York City and James H. McGill of Indiana, influential social

127
Business Men’s League for FDR, Wearing Apparel Division, Advertisement, Walsh Papers, Box 37,
Folder PNC Printed Material.
128
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 468.
83
worker Grace Abbott, and W. H. Settle, the chairman of the Roosevelt Agricultural
Committee.
129
Individual donations originated across the country but with heavy
concentrations from New York City, and to a lesser extent, Washington DC. Appeals
were targeted at “unattached progressives and liberals, especially those who already
contributed to National Democratic Party.” But no funds were accepted directly from the
DNC or any other political organizations. An early check for $2,000 from the DNC was
personally returned by Walsh. Nonetheless, on La Follette’s suggestion, Walsh and Niles
sought to re-direct donations already pledged to the DNC over to the PNC.
130

By the end of October, donations topped $50,000. By the election, another
$10,000 had come in. More than $20,00 of that went to individual states where affiliates
had been established. Three thousand dollars flowed to Wisconsin, $2,250 to the
Minnesota Progressive Committee, and $1,500 to California; Nearly $5,500 went to
Massachusetts, almost half of which came from in-state contributors who earmarked their
donations, and $2,000 of which funded a sizable radio program. The biggest amount,
$7,500, went to Nebraska, but all but $1,000 was dedicated to Sen. Norris’ political
operations. Because the administrators tightly controlled expenditures and such a large
flow of donations came in during the last week of the campaign, the PNC was left with a
surplus of more than $6,000. The executive committee unanimously decided to retain

129
Contributions Received as of 29 September 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Walsh, Frank P. 1864-
1939, Exec Chm PNC Correspondence 1936 Sept 25-29 PNC; Minutes of Executive Committee of the
PNC, 30 October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37, Folder PNC Minutes, pp. 3-5.
130
“Confidential Memorandum of Discussions on Policy at Special Meeting of the Executive Committee of
the PNC Held Saturday night and Sunday, Sept. 26 and 27”, 28 September 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36,
Folder: Miscellaneous Memos [2], p. 9.
84
these funds as a nucleus of post-election efforts. Refunding the money to donors on a pro-
rated basis was considered but rejected as impractical and expensive.
131

Toward a Mass Media Strategy
La Follette, in conjunction with Walsh, guided the PNC’s national strategy toward
an emphasis on newer, less conventional forms of generating public attention and
support. At the key September 26 meeting of the executive committee, La Follette
stressed the need to invest in activities with the most “bang for the buck”: newspaper and
radio spots. When Maurice Davidson suggested caravans, street corner speakers and large
meetings, La Follette, did not hesitate to shoot the idea down. A savvy practitioner of
mass politics, he realized that the rise of new cultural mediums rendered such campaign
stand-bys less effective and less efficient. They required more money than newspaper and
radio spots and reached fewer potential supporters.
132
Given the PNC’s limited budget,
La Follette suggested other similarly efficient methods. Rather than print too much
literature, the group could send out press releases that included the information to rebut
Landon’s speeches.
133

In his words, “Radio and newspapers mean national publicity, which will cost
nothing, and will reach the greatest number of people. Our only expense would be

131
Minutes of the Executive Committee of the PNC, 30 October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37, Folder PNC
Minutes, pp. 3-5.
132
“Confidential Memorandum of Discussions on Policy at Special Meeting of the Executive Committee
of the PNC Held Saturday night and Sunday, Sept. 26 and 27”, 28 September 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36,
Folder: Miscellaneous Memos [2], p. 6.
133
Ibid., p. 7
85
multigraphing and distribution of releases to our correspondents.”
134
It was of the utmost
necessity to react quickly to Landon campaign’s moves. Judson King’s Research
Division would function as a rapid response center, an “ammunition factory,” which
could decide which gun to load depending on the situation—a paid radio spot or a widely
circulated press release. “Our Committee, weak as it is, has certain attributes and
elements of strength. La Guardia or Norris make a statement and it is carried all over the
country, as well as in very metropolitan newspapers. The press and radio are assets and
we should make the best use of them. Concentrate on using these facilities and we will
have an immense effect on the campaign in spite of our limited financial resources.”
135

In order for the press releases to remain effective, their quality had to be high and
tightly connected to the story of the day. Different sponsors would be good for different
issues. In this era, college presidents were potentially powerful voices. Their cultural
authority gave them the heft needed to balance out the conservative tilt of the mainstream
press.
136
Thus, when the head of Dartmouth endorsed Landon, the committee circulated a
press release announcing an FDR endorsement from Chancellor Chase of NYU. Mary
Woolley, president of Mount Holyoke College issued a statement, drafted for her by the
PNC and Estelle Sternberger, executive director of World Peaceways acceded to a
request regarding FDR’s commitment to keeping the peace. The Committee also arranged
interviews with and statements from “nationally known literary figures” such as

134
Ibid., p. 8.
135
Ibid., p. 8.
136
Ibid., p. 8.
86
Alexander Woolcott. Walsh also entertained the possibility of securing funds from people
in the motion picture industry to create a short film promoting FDR as the progressive
choice.
137

Requests for La Guardia to speak around the country flooded the office, in
numbers exceeding those for all other figures. The PNC set up a sizable itinerary of dates,
set aside nearly $3,000 for expenses and sent advance men to coordinate each speaking
arrangement.
138
In addition to the numerous nationally and locally prominent speakers
who fanned out across the nation (generally in coordination with the DNC’s own
Speakers Bureau), the PNC collaborated with Labor's Non-Partisan League and the Good
Neighbor League to sponsor a radio program on CBS every night from September 28
through the first week of November.
139
The nightly fifteen-minute radio program
successfully produced large numbers of small dollar donations and requests for copies of

137
“Ibid., p. 8..
138
Minutes of Regular Meeting of PNC Executive Committee, 7 October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37,
Folder PNC Minutes, p. 2.
139
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 464. Speakers included “Paul Blanshard, Representative
Paul Kvale, Harold Loeb, Representative Maury Maverick, Henry Pratt Fairchild, Senator James Couzens,
Henrik Willem Van Loon, Bennett Cerf, Stuart Chase, Horace Kallen, Harry W. Chase, Mary Woolley,
Jerome Frank, Adolf A. Berle, Senator Hugo Black, Josephine Roche, Frances Perkins, Rabbi S. S. Wise,
John L. Lewis, William Green, Sidney Hillman, Harold L. Ickes, Senator Homer Bone, Senator Burton K.
Wheeler, Mayor La Guardia, Governor Philip La Follette, Senator George Norris, Virginia Gildersleeve,
David K. Niles, Senator Lewis Schwellenbach, George M. Harrison, Edward Filene, Harry Hopkins,
Joseph P. Kennedy, Thomas Kennedy, George Berry, Grace Abbott, Stanley High, John Cudahy, John G.
Winant, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Edward P. Costigan, and, of course, the various Committee staff
members.”
87
speeches, Walsh reported. The spots were “more far reaching and effective” than any
pamphlets or press releases.
140

Nonetheless, the Correspondence Division established contact with important
independent and progressive leaders across the county and sent out the PNC’s literature
to numerous mailing lists. In addition to the lists of the National Popular Government
League and the 3,000 workers of National Progressive League, the PNC also used those
of the socialist-affiliated League for Industrial Democracy and of those labor unions
willing to cooperate. By the end of October, the PNC had disseminated nearly one
million lots of literature, including reproductions of the Chicago conference's Declaration
of Principles and some of the various speeches sponsored by the Committee.
141
The
pamphlet “Why Progressives are for Roosevelt” specifically targeted potential weak spots
where the tradition of independent progressivism ran deep: the Pacific Northwest and
such upper Midwestern states as Michigan, Illinois, Nebraska, and Indiana. The pamphlet
included the PNC’s Declaration of Principles and La Follette’s speech, as well as brief
statements from liberals and progressives across the country.
142

One week before the election, Walsh reported that it had been “most gratifying”
to receive of “small contributions, endorsement cards and interesting letters” as a result of
the PNC’s extensive outreach effort. Reaching out through lists provided by the

140
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of PNC Executive Committee, 7 October, 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37,
Folder PNC Minutes, p. 2.
141
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 464-5.
142
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of PNC Executive Committee, 7 October, 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37,
Folder PNC Minutes, p. 3.
88
Democratic State Committees, and via labor unions and independent progressive groups,
the PNC had succeeded in “accumulat[ing] a very valuable card index of people all over
country committed to PNC’s principles.”
143

PNC Discourse
The PNC’s official statements— the Declaration of Principles, a Speaker’s
Manual, and Norris’ keynote speech— revealed a rhetoric fully in keeping with the
ideology of an older generation of Progressives in several respects. A late September
press release on the PNC’s mission hearkened back to notions of impartial expertise by
touting the importance of the PNC’s Research Department, led by Judson King,
managing director of the long-lived National Popular Government league. Its mission
was “to supply data and facts, with clarity and accuracy, bearing upon the issues of the
campaign… The effort will be to present the issues as they appear to the Progressives of
the country.”
The group struck a pose that disclaimed and disdained partisanship and flaunted
pretensions of purely objective research, transparently presenting the reality. “The
organization, being non-partisan, is primarily concerned in revealing naked facts upon
which the electorate can safely rely. They will deal with the situation that confronts the
country today and will be set forth without overstatement or partisan political rancor.”
144

143
Ibid., p. 2.
144
Press Release, “Meeting of General Officers of Progressive National Committee Held Late Into
Saturday Night,” Walsh Papers, Box 37, Folder PNC Minutes, p. 3.
89
The topics of various memos were attuned to the hopes, fears, and long-standing
concerns of older Progressives—conservation, electricity rates, the lack of waste in the
PWA, the futility of a vote for Union Party candidate William Lemke, and why FDR was
“no more a dictator than George Washington.”
However, it was a concise paragraph in the Speaker’s Manual that conveyed the
essence of the Progressive narrative of history, their model of social change and political
process:
The Progressive way is the American way. Franklin D. Roosevelt
is the representative of the American tradition. The fight between
Roosevelt and Landon is the fight between American democracy and the
oligarchy of special privilege. The conflict began when our ancestors in
1776 fought for equal opportunity for all against the ancient Old World
system of privileges for the few at the expense of the many. The fight has
been carried on by patriotic Americans, dedicated to the American
tradition of progress, liberalism and equal opportunity and true
democracy, ever since. Our leader in that fight today is President
Roosevelt. Our opponent is Governor Landon and the reactionary interests
which stand behind him. It is a conflict which is above party. It is a
conflict between the American idea, the Progressive and the Liberal idea,
and the selfish, grasping irresponsible dictatorship of the few.
145

By pointing to the American people as fundamentally progressive and unified
against numerically small “oligarchy of special privilege,” progressives blinded
themselves to genuinely popular sources of reaction. In particular, they entirely elided the
racial inequality that both fractured the U.S. population and structured the very idea of
the American people. White racism could undermine the image of a fundamentally good
and just people. As a corollary of this, on a strategic level, attempts to back equal civil

145
PNC Speakers Manual, Walsh Papers, Box 37, Folder PNC Misc Speakers Manual.
90
rights, much less social equality, posed a real threat to FDR’s coalition, which depended
heavily on racially-biased white populations across the country and especially in the Jim
Crow South. Cosmopolitan, urban based progressives, especially those part of the
Popular Front, pushed for remedies to racial inequality despite this political dilemma, but
at its top, the 1936 PNC represented an older progressive framework, grounded in mostly
white areas, especially the Upper Midwest, that was putatively color-blind at best and
laced with white supremacy at worst.
Linked to this elision of race, which masked profound social inequality, was the
implicit glorification of the U.S.’s role as a force for progress in the wider world, which
implicitly elided other sources of progress and denied the regressive aspects of American
actions, whether political, economic or social. All problems could be pinned on “private
monopoly”—the older republicanist term employed to explain the deformities of
industrial capitalism. Although Americans were “a liberty-loving people,” Norris
exclaimed, “human greed, selfish interests, and a combination of heartless monopoly, had
well-nigh broken down our democratic form of government.” On the people’s behalf,
Roosevelt was waging a “war against oppression and injustice,” Norris explained.
Providing a template for the Popular Front progressives who followed them, the
older progressives identified progress in history with the American nation. Obviously this
was quite useful in attempting to consolidate progressive goals and activism as not only
legitimately American, but essentially so. But in claiming that the very embodiment of
what America meant was progressive and what was progressive was quintessentially
American, the activists overreached. By glorifying the virtue of the American people and
91
the current President, they gave themselves little space to understand the distinctly un-
progressive actions of the President, much less those of the American people and the U.S.
in the world. One aspect of this weakness was largely internal. To the extent that
progressives believed in the frame it could blind them to the possibility of the American
people and the Democratic President acting in unjust, inequitable ways, leading them to
both over-confidence in the strength of their struggle, to inability to reason through
divisions in the progressive coalition, and a paranoid, conspiratorial state-of-mind when
the political situation turned against then, as it would, especially during the early years of
the Cold War.
At the moment of great strength, progressives reinforced the power of nationalism
in general and of American exceptionalism in particular. An alternative would have been
to represent the American nation and progressive politics as overlapping but not co-
extensive spheres. The U.S. and many of its people and leaders had been a force for
progress, at times. On many other occasions, however, progressivism and Americanism
were opposed. Americans and the U.S. had not and did not always act in keeping with the
values of the Popular Front progressives. And there were many other sources of
progressive action aside from the people, leaders, and government of the U.S.
Recognizing this situation could have led Popular Front progressives to articulate a more
flexible way of thinking about the intersection of progressive politics and the American
nation. A grounded, hybridized multi-national framework for progressive politics, rather
than an anti-national or nationalist could have been the way forward.
92
The predominant, even perhaps exclusive, form of oppression contemplated in the
PNC’s official materials was economic. Economic instability and the lack of a
widespread “decent standard of living” were the problems, according to the Declaration
of Principles. The cause was "the blind selfishness of those who would rather see society
in ruins than yield up their un-American privilege of exploitation and unjustified
economic power." The common good, at least on this economic issues, required everyone
to “work together”—“the social usefulness of selfish individualism has passed.”
In order “to preserve liberty, establish security and re-create equality of
opportunity,” the PNC backed six key principles:

1. The right of every American to worship God according to the dictates of
his conscience, to express his opinion through a free press and free
assemblage; and to have an effective voice in his political and economic
life.
2. The right of every American on the farm and in the city to earn a
comfortable living by useful work and to receive for his work an income
which the full productive capacity of society can afford.
3. The right of American youth to develop their talents through public
education, adequately supported, and to find a place in the life and work of
their country.
4. The right of men and women whose industry has helped to build the
nation to face their declining years free from fear of want.
5. The right of labor to bargain collectively through representatives of
their own choosing and free from interference by employers.
6. The right of every American to live under a government strong enough
to suppress the lawless, wise enough to see beyond the selfish desires of
the moment, and just enough to consider the welfare of the people as a
whole.

While the first and last of these principles addressed politics—civil and political
rights and the government’s mode of operation—the middle four specifically demanded
93
the right to a decent standard of living for all Americans, young and old, men and
women, rural and urban. The first and the fifth vaunted the importance of democracy in
government and at the workplace—of the right for all Americans “to have an effective
voice in his political and economic life” and the right of workers to collective bargaining
with their employers.

These emphases are not surprising given that the PNC’s Declaration
of Principles heavily borrowed its language from the 1934 and 1936 platforms of the
Wisconsin Progressive party.
146

Despite the economistic lens, that permeated PNC written materials, PNC-
arranged speakers ventured far beyond these limits. Official discourse was underpinned
by the long-standing “the people vs. the interests” socio-political model, which was so
characteristic of American political culture since the 19
th
century. And yet while
officially acceptable topics included only social security, labor rights, social service and
relief measures, agriculture, and the regulation of businesses, especially utilities, and
banks. Yet prominent African-American leader Mary McLeod Bethune publicly spoke
about how FDR’s administration had bettered the poor conditions of her community and
a Southern Negro Progressive Committee was specifically formed. Mrs. Edward P.
Costigan emphasized “the woman's viewpoint in discussing Roosevelt's hatred of war.”
Many speakers, in fact, pointed to the need to avert war in their case for Roosevelt’s re-
election: from John Cudahy, U.S. Ambassador to Poland, to Sen. La Follette himself.
Even a PNC pamphlet produced late in the campaign proclaimed “A VOTE AGAINST
ROOSEVELT IS A VOTE FOR LANDON- AND THE DANGER OF: WAR, HOOVER

146
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 462, note 27.
94
STARVATION, REPUBLICAN REACTION, SUPPRESSION OF CIVIL
LIBERTIES.”[sic]

Post-Election
From its founding, the PNC’s leadership anticipated frequent press inquiries as to
whether the PNC was the “beginning of a third party.” The answer was unvarnished
denial. The only purpose was “the support of Roosevelt” in 1936. The founding
conference took “no position” on the question and instructed its representatives “you are
in no position to speak” on the matter.
147
The potential of the group’s future remained
more ambiguous, however. Akin to the new Labor’s Non-Partisan League, the possibility
of establishing a progressive institution on a permanent basis tantalized many on the left-
of-center.
In 1932, the National Progressive League had dissipated after the election despite
the hunger of many progressives for a permanent organization to maintain and augment
their political influence. In 1936, calls for the continuation of the PNC after the election
again rang loudly, including from many state leaders. The chairman of the Roosevelt
Progressive Republican Club of Kansas hoped the PNC would last. Many locals were
urging the group to call a state convention for a permanent organization of progressives
and progressives were committed to shunning the Republican Party until it was

147
Minutes of the Regular Meeting of PNC Executive Committee, 7 October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 37,
Folder PNC Minutes, p. 5.
95
“divorced” from the “old guard.”
148
A New Yorker from the Wanaka Democratic
Organization in Upper Manhattan made a similar, if less impassioned inquiry.
149

In California, calls for keeping the PNC were especially insistent. There, the
formation of the Progressive State Committee represented the apex of organizing among
progressives. Although strong for Roosevelt, Davis wrote to Walsh in October, the “real
interest” of “practically everyone” was in the group’s “future possibilities” as
movement.
150
In the days before the election, Davis informed La Follette that “the
executive committee is very anxious to proceed with a permanent organization.” The
situation in California was “unique”—most of the state’s “outstanding liberals and
progressives” were already involved and the group was thus well-positioned to draw
other high-quality individuals to its ranks. They saw the Democratic Party in California
“as reactionary” as Republicans. Keen to elect a liberal governor in 1938, the group
needed know whether the PNC would be the banner around which they could continue to
rally. “In other words, we have a hot Progressive and Liberal iron and we must strike
now,” Davis wrote.
151

Immediately after Election Day, Davis pressed Walsh, too, on whether the
national committee was planning to continue. If not, he wanted to be able to assure the

148
Douglas A. Graham, Roosevelt Progressive Republican Club of Kansas, to Walsh, 20 November 1936,
Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Nov 10-27.
149
John S. Montague to Walsh, 12 November 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Nov 10-27.
150
George Davis to Walsh, 22 October 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Walsh, Frank P. 1864-1939,
Exec Chm, PNC, Correspondence, 1936, Oct 22-23.
151
Davis to Sen. Robert La Follette, 2 November 1936, p. 3, Box 36, Folder Nov 10-27 Walsh Papers.
96
members of the State Committee that they should go ahead with a new venture to achieve
their purposes.
152
As in 1932, plans for future organizing were delayed until the start of
the new year, Davis learned from La Follette. The PSC remained “anxious” to continue
so that it might organize Californians to support the President’s agenda, to back a
progressive candidate in the 1938 gubernatorial election, and to remain in position to act
in the 1940 presidential election.
The dilemma, as he conveyed it to Walsh in a late November letter, concerned his
grouping’s relationship to the Democratic Party of California. Overwhelmingly,
California liberals and progressives looked upon William McAdoo and George Creel as
“reactionaries” and felt the whole of the Democratic Party they controlled were similarly
reactionary. As a “novice in the game of politics,” Davis wondered whether to continue
the PSC or some similar group and attempt to build a progressive organization “interested
in capturing the Democratic Party,” thus assuring an oppositional stance to the McAdoo-
Creel forces or if he should instead “line up with the regular state organization and
attempt to inject some progressive ideas into the state organization by reason of my
personal activities in the matter.” It is curious that Davis openly acknowledged Walsh’s
close relationship to Creel as a reason for inquiring. It seems obvious that Walsh could
not have spoken either without bias or forthrightly and that, additionally, Davis’ note
might have tipped off Creel to the progressives’ intentions against him. It seems
shockingly naïve in retrospect.
153

152
Davis to Walsh, 9 November 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Nov 1-9, p. 2.
153
Davis to Walsh, 19 November 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Nov 10-27.
97
Walsh’s response provides a textbook case of the way in which the flimsy
structure of the independent progressive committee, its centralization of power in the
administration, the slowness of its response and its hesitance to make waves by
establishing progressive power structures outside the administration and Democratic
Party impeded and perhaps even thwarted the development of a robust progressive
electoral infrastructure.
Walsh passed the ball on the future of the PNC to La Guardia, stalling any quick
resolution of the organization’s fate and the attempt to get an early jump on organizing
for the 1938 gubernatorial election. More damningly, he wrote that he thought California
progressives and liberals misestimated Creel’s politics. Walsh considered him “one of the
most fundamental and powerful Liberals in the US.”
154
The wording here was
interestingly nuanced however. To be a “fundamental and powerful” liberal is not
necessarily to be an ideologically strong one, as it is to hold an important position among
liberals for an unspecified reason, perhaps having to do with the political power one has
accumulated, rather than the strength of their commitments to liberal ideals.
Without Walsh’s backing, the Progressive National Committee like its
predecessor, went out with a whimper, disbanding slowly, leaving progressives in various
states to grasp for their own way forward and not bequeathing a vital infrastructure to the
next round of local, state and federal elections. Later attempts to unify progressives
outside the orbit of Roosevelt fizzled, as with Governor Philip La Follette’s 1938
endeavor to rally progressives in a new “National Progressives of America” Party,

154
Walsh to Davis, 23 November 1936, Walsh Papers, Box 36, Folder Nov 10-27.
98
although he made attempts to reach out to Raymond Haight, noted Northern California
moderate progressive, and Fiorello La Guardia. Roosevelt’s decision to run for an
unprecedented third term aborted the opportunity and the pressing need to organize a
third party.

National Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt and Wallace of 1940
In the 1940 election, the National Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt
and Wallace, chaired by Fiorello La Guardia, formed to organize progressives behind the
President's re-election. In many ways, it echoed the endeavors of 1932 and 1936. Its
progressive constituency had evolved considerably since then, however. Some in the
older generation of progressives had lurched rightward politically, like Donald Richberg,
and many more were actively opposing the Roosevelt administration’s interventionist
foreign policy inclinations, including the “La Follette brothers, Burton K. Wheeler,
Oswald Garrison Villard, Amos Pinchot, Hiram Johnson, Stuart Chase, Gerald P. Nye,
Harry Sauthoff, and Charles Beard.”
155
In the wake of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact,
Communists and those following the Communist line were engaged in similar battles.
And Labor’s Non-Partisan League, led by the fierce isolationist, John L. Lewis had
crumbled over this very issue.
Although progressives, both old and new, gained a strong ally with FDR’s choice
of Henry Wallace as running mate in 1940, their victory came not because of, but in spite
of the level of progressives’ power within the Democratic Party. In fact, the 1940

155
McCoy, “Progressive National Committee,” 455, note 2.
99
Democratic Convention was on the verge of breaking down over the selection, until the
President dispatched his wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, to pacify the delegates and advocate for
Wallace. A committee of progressives did not exist to put up a fight on Wallace’s behalf.
Nonetheless, the National Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt and
Wallace made an important impact, under the behind-the-scenes leadership of FDR aide
Thomas Corcoran. George Norris remained the honorary Chairman and it gained leaders
such as industrialist James H. McGill, university president Frank Kingdon, and film star
Melvyn Douglas who would remain significant actors in independent progressive
organizing throughout the 1940s, including with NCIVR’s successor, the National
Citizens Political Action Committee, which emerged in 1943 as a project of CIO-PAC.
156

Given the dissent of many old-line progressives, especially the insurgent
Republican Senators, the National Committee of Independent Voters abandoned the term,
and embraced its role as purely an election vehicle, shedding pretensions of permanency.
The fracturing of the Popular Front, due to the Nazi-Soviet Pact, had undermined other
collaborations, which in turn heightened attention on the election itself. In L.A.’s
entertainment industry, for instance, the dominant political organization was Hollywood
for Roosevelt, rather than the more broadly conceived Motion Picture Democratic
Committee of the 1930s or the Hollywood Democratic Committee of the mid 1940s.
The 1940 mobilization would prove transitional. Industrial labor unionism waxed
as the old-line progressive formation waned. If not for John Lewis’s fury with FDR and
general anti-war sentiment, it is conceivable that independent progressive organizing

156
Ibid.
100
efforts in 1940 might have centered around industrial labor unionism. Instead, these
began in earnest only during 1943 and 1944, with the creation of CIO-PAC and then
NCPAC, led by garment union chief Sidney Hillman. Despite the shattering impact of the
Nazi-Soviet Pact, it seems clear that the long delay in building an organizationally
independent power base contributed as much or more to progressive weakness as the
shattering impact of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and divisions over American involvement in
World War II generally.
101
CHAPTER TWO
THE NATIONAL CITIZENS POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEE AND THE
MAKING OF WHITE-COLLAR MOVEMENT TO EXPAND THE NEW DEAL,
1943-1947

This chapter recounts the story of a very significant mid-twentieth century
progressive organization that historians have almost entirely glossed over. The National
Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC) appears for only a few pages in a single
scholarly history.
157
In its time, however, it played a pivotal role in left-liberal politics
during the transition between FDR and Truman, between World War II and the Cold
War, between the liberalism of the Popular Front and of the Cold War. NCPAC was one
of most successful experiments in building progressive power within the American
political system. While its short-life span and frequent name-changes have relegated it to
the precincts of oblivion, its significance should not be underestimated. Its story opens a
window into the self-consciously progressive component of the New Deal coalition. The

157
Steve Fraser’s biography of Sidney Hillman, the garment union chief who helped birth NCPAC from his
leadership of CIO-PAC, is the only published academic analysis. Fraser’s the most insightful of all
commentators, but his coverage is extremely limited and peters out after Hillman’s death in the middle of
1946. It draws principally from the papers of Hillman, now located in the School of Industrial Relations
Library at Cornell University. A relatively short Columbia University Master’s Thesis in Political Science
by Albert Blum, written in 1947 and deposited in Columbia’s special collections, provides some important
organizational details but lacks distance from the subject and perceives much of it through the lens of rising
anti-Communism. The three volume history of the Wallace for President movement, by journalist and
campaign participant Curtis MacDonald, also is an invaluable source of details but is far more a chronicle
and attempt to redeem the Wallace’s movement from charges against it than a consideration of NCPAC in
the larger scheme of progressive movement building. There are no archives or collections specifically
devoted to the organization. I was able to find materials in the papers of the Progressive Party located at the
University of Iowa and the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research. There is also some
scattered material of very limited utility at the FDR Presidential Library and the NYU Tamiment Library.
Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1993); Albert A. Blum, “National Citizens Political Action Committee” (master’s thesis, Columbia
University, 1948); Curtis D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 3 vols. (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1965).
C.B. Baldwin Papers, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, IA.
102
path running from its predecessors of the 1930s through its immediate successors of the
late 1940s traces the arc of mainstream, white middle-class progressive engagement with
electoral and legislative politics.
Founded in 1944 as the white-collar auxiliary of the CIO Political Action
Committee, NCPAC aimed to mobilize support for FDR’s re-election and the CIO-PAC’s
social democratic program among people from all walks of life, but especially
businessmen, professionals, and middle-class women. This program elaborated on FDR’s
Second Bill of Rights, emphasizing the quest to “build a better America and a better
world,” rejecting prejudice, championing political rights and social equality for women
and blacks, and seeking to win the war and then win the peace through a just, well-
planned full-employment economy.
158
But unlike the “independent” progressive
committees for FDR on which it was modeled, the group was able continue after the
presidential election. Its autonomy from the Administration and the Democratic Party
allowed it to respond to a long-standing, pent-up desire among the progressive base of the
New Deal coalition. By the spring of 1945, the organization became independent from
CIO-PAC, gained new staff and board leadership, and began to pioneer an aggressively
grassroots, white-collar movement for social democracy.
For the first time in twenty years, non-labor progressives had an autonomous,
national vehicle for advancing their own vision and overcoming the country’s messy
patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments (which in turn, were rooted in the

158
Robert H. Ziegler, The CIO: 1935–1955, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 184-
185.
103
nation’s federal system of government and the socioeconomic differentiation of
geography on a continental scale). While the divide over Communism and the repression
of the Cold War would ultimately doom NCPAC’s successors, NCPAC’s story provides
a remarkable example of a progressive organization that stretched more broadly through
elite networks and national media, and more deeply through state and local chapters, than
nearly any progressive organization in the decades before or since.
At the same time, its rise and fall reveals how and why the power of liberals were
so limited despite their very real achievements. The fact that this organization originated
so late into FDR’s New Deal Administration left it weaker than it might have been if it
had been building power for a longer period of time. And although NCPAC enabled
progressives, at long last, to break away from FDR’s grasp institutionally, even in his
death they saddled themselves with his baggage, overestimating his alignment with them
and denigrating Truman by comparison with this rose-tinted view. Many liberals’
lingering knee-jerk aversion to partisanship and a less-than-strategic theory of change—
both inherited from their Progressive Era precursors helped drive NCPAC’s successor—
the Progressive Citizens of America—to form the Progressive Party and abandon their
relationships and mainstream credibility.
The organization’s story offers insights into a key phase of the New Deal
coalition’s self-consciously progressive component. If the Cold War was the ultimate and
precipitating cause of death, liberals’ chronic institutional weakness left them vulnerable
in the first place. They suffered from a syndrome of powerlessness. For these reasons,
104
NCPAC’s story provides a key to understanding the nature and development of the New
Deal order amidst political fragmentation and Cold War polarization.
Although the Progressive Party appears frequently in discussions of the Popular
Front’s demise amidst the Cold War, the fact that its primary antecedent is so little known
is testament to a pronounced absence in the historical imagination about left-of-center
politics in mid-twentieth century America. In the literature on the “rise and fall of the
New Deal order,” historians depict progressives losing the initiative early on, foreclosing
the possibility of a “social democratic breakthrough,” and leaving space for the
splintering of the New Deal coalition and conservative resurgence.
159
In Jefferson Cowie
and Nick Salvatore’s recent assessment, the New Deal order itself was a “fragile
juggernaut,” a contradictory construction in which the great wave of left-liberal-labor
momentum seemed to quickly ebb away in successive decades
Unlike the consensus history of decades past, dominant narratives often now
presume that if only left-liberals and labor had fought harder and or smarter, they would
have achieved greater “success.” If only they retained a populist, anti-monopolist
opposition to the corporate order, refused to embrace anti-Communism at home and
abroad, avoided the bureaucratization of labor unions, and refused to separate class from
race and gender, progressives could have seized the moment, made it live up to its

159
Variants of this thesis appear in Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession
and War, (New York: Knopf, 1995); Ira Katznelson, “Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?” in Steve
Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1989); Nelson Lichtenstein, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining” in Fraser and
Gerstle, eds. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989); Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Lizabeth Cohen, A
Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, (New York: Knopf, 2003).
105
potential. Instead, their ideological weakness and missteps led to the attenuation of the
New Deal order and left-liberalism generally. Even the recent argument by Cowie and
Salvatore that the New Deal order constituted “The Long Exception” in American
politics, emphasizes the ideological baggage of individualism which New Dealers shared
with the American culture more broadly. Liberals’ failure was ideologically over-
determined, in their telling.
160

If the New Deal coalition was indeed a “fragile juggernaut,” as Cowie and
Salvatore suggest, it is worth asking how those at its heart perceived its strengths and
weaknesses.
161
To what extent did they believe in the inevitability of the “welfare state”
and the solidity of the “liberal consensus”? To what degree did they recognize its
fragility, wrestle with its internal contradictors, struggle forcefully against its opponents?
Could they have fought harder or smarter?
The story of NCPAC demonstrates that these progressives took very little for
granted politically. They saw clearly the threats to their ideals, from within and from
outside the New Deal coalition, and never felt content to rest on their laurels. If anything,
they exaggerated the power of forces arrayed against them and in the Democratic Party,
even fearing the onset of fascism in America. This propelled almost all of them away
from Truman and many of them into the new Progressive Party. If they had any
complacency, it was their faith in the virtue and wisdom of “the People.” And as many

160
Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, “The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in
American History,” International Labor and Working-Class History 74 no. 1 (Fall 2008): 3-32.
161
Robert Zieger initially coined the phrase “fragile juggernaut” to characterize the industrial labor
movement during the same era. The CIO: 1935–1955, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1995), 1.
106
scholars, especially from the urban and suburban history fields have shown, “the
people”—even those who were voting for FDR—were riddled with affinities for forms of
privilege and identity that led them to oppose a racially egalitarian and anti-imperialist
social democratic politics.
But in light of this fact, NCPAC’s story redeems progressives. It shows that:
1. Progressives struggled as mightily and as perceptively as could be expected, especially
given the context out of which they emerged.
2. The limits on the progressive thrust at the heart of the New Deal order had as much to
do with institutional fragmentation, as with progressives’ own ideology or timidity, the
political culture of the American public, the exceptional conservatism of the American
business community, right-wing repression, the Cold War, and the consequences of
American apartheid.
3. It takes more than the “correct” position to seize the moment, it requires well-
developed institutions, and despite impressive work in a short period of time,
progressives in the mid-1940s were far behind in this effort.

Establishment
Formally established June 18, 1944, after receiving approval from the CIO and
CIO-PAC boards, NCPAC aimed to mobilize support for FDR’s re-election and the CIO-
PAC’s social democratic program among people from all walks of life, but especially
businessmen, professionals, and middle-class women. Garment union leader Sidney
Hillman served as chairman and the organization closely coordinated with CIO-PAC.
107
Clark H. Foreman, the president of the Southern Conference on Human Welfare, acted as
executive director. Individual financial contributions supported a handful of staff
members.
NCPAC was Hillman’s brainchild. Most narrowly, it sought to fill the gap left by
CIO-PAC’s newfound legal inability to fund electioneering after the primaries. But
Hillman had greater ambitions—he aimed to tip the balance of power toward
progressives in campaigns across the country. Upon learning of Hillman’s plans, Interior
Secretary Harold Ickes wrote eagerly of his anticipation that NCPAC would “take on the
job that the Corcoran group [the NCIVR] did so well four years ago.” He enthused
privately over the organization’s “great possibilities and wide play” in large part because
he believed that the CIO and the National Committee of Independent Voters for
Roosevelt and Wallace (NCIVR) had contributed far more to FDR’s election in 1940
than the Democratic National Committee. The committee would not only serve as an
auxiliary of the President’s campaign as before, but would emulate the model of New
York’s American Labor Party in its quest to build progressive power on its own terms.
162

Inheritances
To other contemporary observers, as well, it was clear that the NCPAC inherited
the role of the NCIVR. Led by FDR aide Thomas Corcoran, the NCIVR had been just the
third iteration of “independent” progressive committee for the election of Franklin D.

162
Steve Fraser, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor (Cornell University
Press, 1993), 515.
108
Roosevelt, first initiated in the 1932 election as the National Progressive League and
replicated in 1936 as the Progressive National Committee. Despite grassroots interest in
maintaining them after each election, FDR and his aides controlled these groups behind
the scenes and chose to extinguish them to prevent the rise of alternative power centers.
Although NCPAC’s initial establishment under the auspices of the CIO marked a
consequential shift, the organization drew on the template established in 1932 and
modified in successive presidential campaign cycles. These committees had evolved
through the 1930s to include new, generally younger progressive leaders rooted in the
urban, racially diverse Popular Front milieu, while retaining connections to the largely,
rural, white cohorts so prominent in the first quarter of the century. NCPAC retained
many key officers from Corcoran’s 1940 NCIVR group, such as Indiana industrialist
James H. McGill, Newark University president Frank Kingdon, and screen star Melvyn
Douglas.

Mass Appeal
NCPAC sought to speak for the whole of the American public, in all its social
diversity. Its initial leadership took steps to ensure a more mainstream image by seeking a
co-counsel from the Midwest, who was unconnected to the labor movement and a
practicing Protestant or Catholic, even as CIO attorney (and secret Communist Party
member) John Abt handled the daily workload.
163
At least of one of the two additional

163
Morris L. Cooke to Sidney Hillman, 18 July 1944, Folder “Executive Committee, 1944 – 1945,” Box
19, C.B. Baldwin Papers, Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City, IA;
John Abt, with Michael Meyerson, Advocate and Activist: Memoirs of an American Communist Lawyer
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993).
109
slots reserved for women was to go to a Midwesterner, and one was to be held by
someone “affiliated with some Women’s Clubs organization like the Association of
University Women” such as Verda Barnes. James G. Patton, president of National
Farmers Union, served as the board’s leading representative of that constituency.
In Steve Fraser’s words,

The NCPAC quickly became a high-visibility organization, attracting the literati
and glitterati, businessmen and bankers, publicists and professionals, intellectuals
and veteran reformers. The NCPAC board and membership comprised a veritable
roll of honor: Elmer Benson, ex-Governor of Minnesota; old-line progressive
Gifford Pinchot; Freda Kirchwey of the Nation; Mrs. M. M. Warburg, Will
Alexander, Vice President of the Rosenwald Fund; Louis J. Reynolds of Reynolds
Metals; Mary McLeod Bethune; Reinhold Neihbur; Oscar Lange; Max Lerner;
Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson; Ben Hecht; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.;
Lillian Smith; Paul Robeson; Dorothy Parker and other luminaries from the arts
and sciences as well as the worlds of entertainment and politics lent its
membership a certain glamour.
164

At the same time, the leadership conscientiously worked to include many leaders
from oppressed groups and an array of diverse constituencies. Twenty-two of the 142
board members were Black, including George Weaver from the CIO’s Committee to
Abolish Racial Division, A. Philip Randolph, and Robert Weaver. White Southern racial
and economic liberals included Clark Foreman, chairman of Southern Conference on
Human Welfare, and its executive secretary, James Dombrowski, as well as Lucy
Randolph Mason and Virginia Durr. Ethnic organizations for Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians
and Slavs all had representatives.
165

164
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 516.
165
Specifically, the ethnic organizations included the United Committee of Slovak Americans, the Serbian
Vidovodos Congress, the Croatian Fraternal Union and the American Slav Congress
110

An Unexpected Movement
Its founders never intended for NCPAC to become a mass movement that
organized in local districts.
166
In fact, they disdained the prospect. On one hand,
progressive and union leaders were wary that Communists would flood into the group
and dominate its local management. On the other, existing politicians, especially
American Labor Party (ALP) leaders, Vito Marcantonio in particular, disliked the
prospect of a rival matrix of ward and precinct clubs. And Hillman, although tolerant of
Communist presence in the ALP, harbored no special inclination toward democratic
control of progressive organizations.
167
Instead, Hillman understood NCPAC initially “as
an influence network with lines running straight to the headquarters of allied
organizations.” In Steve Fraser’s words, “If the NCPAC could in fact do what Ickes
predicted, and perform the role once played by Thomas Corcoran’s group in 1940, then,
together with the [CIO-]PAC’s methodical street-level mobilization, the ‘people’s
program of 1944’ might become something more than a pious hope and programmatic
wish list.”
168

166
Curtis D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army, (New York: Marzani & Munsell, 1965), I: 50. Leaders were
wary that Communists would flood into the group and dominate it. Existing politicians disliked the
prospect of a rival matrix of local clubs.
167
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 50.
168
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 516.
111
Nonetheless, through its smart campaign material and the unrelenting right-wing
attacks upon it, NCPAC gained more then 18,000 members by the November 1944.
169

The new organization tapped a deep well of grassroots progressives who had previously
lacked a channel through which they could exert their influence nationally, on a
consistent basis. There had been no nation-wide membership organization committed to
the broad progressive agenda, aside from a few state-specific operations, some unions,
and periodic election mobilization efforts. As Steve Fraser observes, “The NCPAC
seemed to give weight and body to the social abstraction of a united front against
reaction” for the first time.
170

Despite this enthusiasm and despite the vitriolic invective directed toward
NCPAC by conservatives, it is difficult to assess the group’s impact during 1944. It
raised more than 380,000 dollars, half as much as CIO-PAC. By way of comparison,
CIO-PAC received $647,903 from trade unions and $376,910 in individual gifts.
171

Although far short of its 1.5 million dollar goal, NCPAC generated more than six times
the amount of its most impressive predecessor, the Progressive National Committee of
1936, which had raised only $20,00 from individual donors and the rest from unions.
172

Funding came in through committees, which focused respectively on Lawyers, Doctors,

169
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 50.
170
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 516.
171
Blum, “National Citizens,” 26.
172
Albert A. Blum, “National Citizens Political Action Committee,” (master’s thesis, Columbia University,
1948), 12. Dollar figure is not adjusted for inflation.
112
Women and Businessmen. Of the $7.5 million spent on the Democrats’ behalf, a fifth
came from the two PACs.
173

NCPAC sought to elect Roosevelt and in a new wrinkle on the old progressive
committee structure, to elect a more progressive Congress too. Its methods included:
1. Bringing to the attention of the electorate the issues of the 1944
campaign and the records of the candidates for office, through the use of
the press, pamphlets, the radio, public meetings, and other appropriate
media;
2. Giving financial assistance to or on behalf of candidates whom the
committee supports;
3. Authorizing and encouraging the organization of Citizens’ Political
Action Committees on a regional or State basis.
174

Records of NCPAC’s mobilization for the 1944 are sparse, especially compared
to its later endeavors. The few existing materials suggest a heavy emphasis on
fundraising and the publishing of pamphlets, with a strong bias toward activities in New
York.
175
Numerous local clubs in support of FDR cropped up in New York, but
ironically, they remained independent of the NCPAC structure. Elinor Gimbel, the
wealthy widow whose husband’s family had owned the eponymous department stores,
struck out on her own to independently organize progressives, including many
internationally-minded Republicans who were wary of the ALP and CIO, but supported

173
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 537
174
Blum, “National Citizens,” 14.
175
The view is based on combing through relevant collections at the University of Iowa, the Tamiment, and
the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research.
113
the President’s re-election. Eventually they became the core of the PCA in New York,
but in 1944 they were too wary of the CIO to join the affiliated NCPAC structure.
176

Complicating the question of NCPAC’s efficacy was the fact that its efforts
heavily overlapped with those of CIO-PAC. In the public imagination, NCPAC’s work
was subsumed under the ambit of CIO-PAC and its successes and failings were decried in
the same terms.
177
However, NCPAC played a key organizational role in the struggle for
power within the Democratic Party. It “institutionalized the CIO’s relationship to
prominent opinion-making, policy-shaping and power-dispensing circles in Washington
and New York.”
178

Transition and Transformation After the 1944 Election
After the election, there was significant support for continuing NCPAC inside and
outside the organization. Unlike previous election cycles, the President and his aides
could not choose to pull the plug on a permanent operation.
In early January 1945, a subcommittee on NCPAC’s future—including Phil
Murray, Gifford Pinchot, C. B. Baldwin, James Patton, Elmer Benson, Robert Weaver,
and Louis Weiss (the attorney for Marshall Field, the progressive publisher of PM)
recommended that NCPAC transform itself it into mass membership organization. While

176
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 50-51.
177
Blum, “National Citizens,” 12. This view of NCPAC’s profile derives from Blum’s contemporary
assessment.
178
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 516.
114
maintaining close connections to the CIO, the new NCPAC would act independently,
from a wider base of support, and with the leadership “not affiliated with any special
group.”
179
The Board of Directors, and its Executive Committee would govern the
organizationally nationally, while at the same time, there would be a large number of
“sponsors” who would provide the organization visibility and heft. At the state level,
there would be affiliates with their own governing boards. Although not immediately
adopted, these suggestions created a template for restructuring.
Although the organization was definitely a product of the Popular Front-era, It
was not strictly a Popular Front organization in the sense of that Communists actually led
the group in any real way. The Board appointed Nebraska Senator George Norris, the
eminence gris of the older, whiter and predominantly Midwestern cluster of progressives,
as its new honorary chairman, in keeping with the tradition of every independent
progressive electoral group since 1932. And it even recommended James Loeb, leader of
the militantly anti-Communist Union for Democratic Action (UDA), for its executive
committee.
Transformation stalled during the winter, however, as the leadership of the
organization remained in dispute. A rivalry festered between CIO leader Philip Murray,
based in Washington, DC and PAC leader Sidney Hillman, based in New York City.
180

Mutual distrust and jealousy prevented close coordination. Even during the election

179
Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 5 January 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 18. The subcommittee included
Philip Murray, Gifford Pinchot, Baldwin, James Patton, Elmer Benson, Robert Weaver, Louis Weiss (the
attorney for Marshall Field, the progressive publisher of PM), and Clark Foreman.
180
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 51-52.
115
campaign, the massive CIO mailing list (tallying 150,000 names, broken down across
fifty-four categories) was under the personal control of Murray alone. Immediately after
the election, Murray began maneuvering to oust Hillman as the chairman of NCPAC.
181

Only days later, Murray first asked Henry Wallace to chair NCPAC. After consulting
with Eleanor Roosevelt, who urged him to accept, he declined, citing his loyalties to the
Democratic Party.
182

At the December 1944 executive committee meeting in D.C., at Murray’s secret
urging, James Patton called for Hillman’s replacement. Patton, the president of the
progressive National Farmers Union, dinged Hillman as too controversial of a figure to
help grow a mass membership organization. Elmer Benson insisted that the group wait
until Hillman was present and Gifford Pinchot, Murray’s choice for Chairman, refused to
accept until he spoke with Hillman. According to Associate CIO-PAC Director C. C.
Baldwin’s later recollection, this move likely saved NCPAC from Hillman’s plans to put
it on the backburner. Hillman was unhappy to hear of his demotion but accepted it.
183

A search for new leadership ensued that winter. For the chairmanship, Eleanor
Roosevelt was the top choice of both Murray and Hillman in the hopes of gaining the
“embrace of more respectable circles of liberalism” beyond the CIO’s working class
constituency. Hillman himself recognized that if the organization sought a wide public
appeal that as a thickly accented Jewish immigrant he would make less than the ideal

181
Ibid.
182
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 537.
183
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 51-52.
116
leader. When Hillman approached the former First Lady, she was wary. She agreed that
Hillman was too controversial and ill-suited to remain as leader, but she responded that
she would accept the position only on the condition that she have full hiring and firing
powers. There were people she couldn’t trust, she said, implicitly referring to
Communists. Unlike Hillman, she would not tolerate their presence. But the challenge
the PACs faced was even greater in scope: “how not to alienate the Democratic Party
without at the same time surrendering the programmatic and political integrity of the
labor movement.”
184

Desire for the organization to endure remained strong. In March 1945, the
executive committee instructed Hillman to appoint a committee to draw up plans and
programs for continuation of permanent organization. Participants included three
women—Dorothy Parker, Nation editor Freda Kirchewy, and Mrs. Edward Warburg—as
well as Weiss and Michael Nisselson, whom Hillman later appointed to head the
Amalgamated Bank.
185
At the March 23, 1945 meeting of the Executive Committee,
Hillman officially announced his attention to step down from the responsibilities of
chairmanship because he was unable to devote the time necessary to make the
chairmanship effective.

184
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 568-569.
185
Subcommittee Meeting Minutes, 5 January 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 18; Steering Committee
Minutes, March 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
117
The Passing of FDR
Amidst this churn, the ground-shaking death of FDR on April 12, 1945
jumpstarted NCPAC again, launching its next, more aggressive phase. Soon after, a trip
through California instilled in Hillman the sense that a hunger for independent
progressive activism was swelling. It would be necessary to fill the leadership vacuum
that had opened with FDR’s expansive, unrivaled leadership of progressive forces and the
Democratic Party since 1932.
In late April, NCPAC issued a four-page document calling for progressives and
liberals to fulfill the FDR’s legacy, quoting the late President on the need for citizen
engagement:
But when the ballots are cast, your responsibilities do not cease. The
public servants you elect cannot fulfill their trust unless you, the people,
watch and advise them, raise your voices in protest when you believe your
public servants to be wrong, back them up when you believe them to be
right. But not for one single moment, can you now or later forget the all-
important goals for which we are aiming, to win the war and unite our
fighting men with their families at the earliest moment, to see that all have
honorable jobs and to create a world peace organization which will
prevent this disaster or one like it from ever coming upon us again.
186

The Hillman-led Committee on Organization recommended an expansion of
NCPAC’s high-profile national leadership, the opening of a D.C. office in addition to the
N.Y. office shared with CIO-PAC, and the selection of Raymond Walsh as the new
chairman of NCPAC. In late April and early May, the Steering Committee moved to
expand its ranks, but agreed upon Elmer Benson as the best choice to serve as chairman

186
Flier, “‘Join with US – Ours is the real struggle to continue and preserve democracy in America’ –
FDR” by NCPAC , Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
118
on May 11, after Eleanor Roosvelt, who was Philip Murray’s choice, ultimately declined
to serve.
187

In the following weeks, the Steering Committee expanded its ranks. And by May
11, the group settled on Elmer Benson, the former Farmer-Labor Governor of Minnesota,
to serve as the organization’s new Chairman.
188
In the late winter, Clark Foreman left his
executive position with NCPAC to take over day-to-day leadership at the Southern
Conference on Human Welfare. C. C. “Beanie” Baldwin, one of Hillman’s key
lieutenants at CIO-PAC, and previously an administrator in the U.S. Department of
Agriculture under Henry Wallace, replaced Foreman as the executive director of
NCPAC. Benson and Baldwin became the animating forces of the organization for the
next several years.
189

Encountering Truman
With more difficulty than they expected, NCPAC’s new upper leadership secured
a meeting with President Truman in early summer. With Roosevelt, leaders from NCPAC
and its CIO allies could visit with only a phone call as notice. With Truman, they had to
wait five days and reach out to Robert Hannegan, chairman of the DNC, until the new

187
Steering Committee Minutes, 25 April 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19; Steering Committee minutes, 4
May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19; Administrative Committee Recommendations, 10 May 1945, Baldwin
Papers, Box 18.
188
Steering Committee Minutes, 25 April 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19; Steering Committee Minutes, 4
May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19; “Administrative Committee Recommendations,” 10 May 1945,
Baldwin Papers, Box 18, Folder “Administrative Committee, 1945 - 1946.”
189
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 51-52.
119
appointments secretary scheduled their visit. Seeing Truman in the place of Roosevelt
was a great shock, but the words of the new President troubled them even more. Weeks
earlier, Truman had rescinded Isador Lubin as the head of the US delegation to Anglo-
American Reparations Committee and replaced him with Edwin Pauley, conservative
Democrat and oil executive from California. Now Truman told NCPAC’s emissaries that
he planned to “get tough” with Russia, in no uncertain terms. “They’re like bulls in a
china shop…. We’ve got to teach them how to behave.”
Baldwin and Benson warned the President that popular dissatisfaction would lead
to Republican success in the 1946 elections. His noncommittal reaction convinced them
that progressive forces would have to make their own way back to wielding power. As
they left the meeting, the idea of a third party, long resonant on the American Left,
returned to their conversation: it might be a necessity, they feared.
190
Subsequently,
NCPAC’s leadership approached the early years of Truman’s presidency against this
background of shock, loss, and worry, predisposed to see all of Truman’s moves as the
accelerating abandonment of Roosevelt’s more progressive legacy.
In the interim, Baldwin and Benson moved aggressively to organize and mobilize
progressive forces in D.C. and nation-wide. Although based in New York, Baldwin
traveled and communicated broadly. On weekly visits to Washington, DC, he organized
progressives and lobbied key powerbrokers. He arranged luncheon meetings of staunch
New Dealers from Congress including Senators like Claude Pepper, Elbert Thomas and
John Blodgett and Representatives such as Helen Gahagan Douglas and Chet Hollifield

190
Ibid., 22-23.
120
from Los Angeles. (The meetings intentionally received little press coverage because the
goal was to organize progressive strategy behind the scenes.)
Committees from NCPAC’s leadership met with sympathetic members of
Truman’s cabinet such as Henry Morgenthau, Harold Ickes, and Henry Wallace during
and after their tenures in order to assess the Administration’s intentions and the changing
political landscape.
191
They sought to keep Ickes from resigning by noting the damage it
could do to progressive morale and he proved receptive to their pleas.
Baldwin also frequently met with Robert Hannegan, Truman’s close ally and
chairman of the DNC, to implore him act in the “New Deal tradition” of appointments,
rhetoric, and policy, warning of the political consequences of Truman’s rightward lurch.
Prompted by civil rights activist Channing Tobias, for instance, NCPAC sent a high-level
delegation to urge Truman to respond to flagrantly racist speeches by Senators Eastland
and Bilbo, and to help pass federal FEPC legislation.
192

Platform
NCPAC exemplified the social democratic strain of American liberalism at its
most ambitious and powerful. By the summer of 1945, its updated platform emphasized
four points:

191
NCPAC Steering Committee Minutes, 6 August 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
192
NCPAC Steering Committee Minutes, 11 July 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 2.
121
1. “A just and durable peace in an economy of world abundance… through
international cooperation and uncompromising opposition to fascism
everywhere”

2. "Attainment of President Roosevelt's Economic Bill of Rights”

3. “Elimination of political, civil and economic discrimination against all
racial and minority groups”

4. “Attainment of full voting rights for all Americans regardless of race,
color or economic class.”
193

To these ends, NCPAC supported federal legislation for full employment, unemployment
insurance, increased minimum wage, public housing and child care, and universal health
insurance as well as an anti-poll tax measure and a permanent Fair Employment Practices
Commission.
194

NCPAC also began to regularly release several publications: a Political Action
Guide, a Fundraising Pamphlet, a revised version of NCPAC’s basic program, a reprint of
FDR’s “Economic Bill of Rights,” and a religiously-oriented pamphlet titled “Faith at

193
Statement of Principles, 23 May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19. These points are direct quotes from
NCPAC’s Statement of Principles.
194
Steering Committee Minutes, 29 November 1945, p. 2, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
122
Work.”
195
NCPAC came out strongly for a large array of domestic programs that
comprised the essence of the social democratic policy agenda in the U.S.

Democratizing the Mass Media
In the fall of 1945, as NCPAC began to expand its grassroots organization, it also
attempted to mobilize its membership to campaign for a more democratic mass media.
Democratizing the media of mass communication was a necessary prerequisite,
NCPAC’s leaders understood, for sustaining a democratic political agenda that
confronted the power of big corporations.
The occasion was the Federal Communication Commission’s first-ever
distribution of the station licenses for FM radio. The likelihood that nearly all licenses
would go toward established commercial broadcasters and metropolitan newspaper
companies greatly disturbed NCPAC. Of trade unions, only two dynamic and progressive
powerhouses—the UAW and the Amalgamated—had submitted applications by the
October 7 deadline—and NCPAC was certain they would be denied. NCPAC alleged that
the FCC was failing to follow the “public service” requirements. Consequently, the
private interests that owned and operated stations were reaping exorbitant profits, 150%
annually, on average, by taking advantage of their control over a scarce, publicly
administered resource.
NCPAC’s widely distributed a report on the situation which had been researched
and written by board member Lewis C. Frank, Jr. It ran advertisements in the Washington

195
Steering Committee Minutes, 29 November 1945, p. 2, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
123
Post and the New York Times indicating that the American people were observing the
congressional hearings. And it petitioned the FCC to hold public hearings in cities like
New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.
196
This moment was key juncture in the
development of the public sphere and NCPAC recognized its significance.

Building a Base at the Grassroots
However, NCPAC’s most visible and potentially its most transformative activity
was its local work, including a program of mass meetings to build public support and
raise money. (These meetings would provide a template for Progressive Citizens of
America and the Progressive Party’s mass approach.) Between June 1945 and December
1946, NCPAC held dinners in nineteen large cities. The first, in New York, on June 21,
1945, attracted one thousand people to honor Hillman and Benson. Similar events in
other cities featured New Dealers such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Harold Ickes, and Henry
Morgenthau.
197
In addition to raising much-needed funds, these events also served as
opportunities to project an independent progressive vision and to critique policies.
198
For
instance, a January 31, 1946 event featured a discussion of US foreign policy, moderated

196
Steering Committee Minutes, 19 September 1945, p. 1, Baldwin Papers, Box 19. The cover for the
“Report to America on Radio Broadcasting” proclaimed that “Control of Broadcasting was ‘Top Priority’
Issue.
197
In April 1946, the group’s memorial service for FDR’s passing included every member of FDR’s final
cabinet minus Truman and Ickes as well as the Roosevelt family and leading liberal politicians such as
Robert Wagner and Herbert Lehman.
198
MacDougall, Gideon's Army, 54-57. For instance, a January 31, 1946 event featured a discussion of US
foreign policy, moderated by PM columnist Max Lerner, in which a high level former administrator of the
Office of Military Government, attacked the lack of de-Nazification in occupied Germany. Rep. Helen
Gahagan Douglas, seconded by New Republic publisher Michael Straight, and university president Frank
Kingdon, advocated United Nations cooperation against the threat of atomic destruction.
124
by PM columnist Max Lerner, in which Bernard Bernstein, former Director of the
Finance Division of the Office of Military Government in occupied German, attacked the
lack of de-Nazification. Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas advocated United Nations
cooperation against the threat of atomic destruction. The impressive memorial service
NCPAC planned on the first anniversary of FDR’s passing, April 12, 1946 did not raise
any money, but it included every member of FDR’s final cabinet minus Truman and
Ickes as well as the Roosevelt family and leading liberal politicians such as Robert
Wagner and Herbert Lehman.
Support from grassroots members and mid-level leaders in cities around the
country accelerated the decision to organize on a mass scale. As noted above, the
decision of expand NCPAC’s mission drew strength from Hillman’s sense that there was
an upwelling of support for independent progressive action in politics after FDR’s
passing. NCPAC decided to setup affiliates in all states, which would back the program
of the national office, but also develop their own activities, maintain financial self-
sufficiency, and endorse local candidates, in consultation with the national office. All
members of NCPAC’s national executive council and national steering committee were
asked to form sponsoring committee within their own states, which would then
collaborate closely with their respective state CIO councils.
199
New York City, and New
York State more generally, became a major center of progressive organizing under the
auspices of Amalgamated leaders Jacob Potofsky, Michael Nisselson, and Raymond
Walsh, but NCPAC aggressively expanded beyond its New York base.

199
Untitled Memo, 21 May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
125
In the summer of 1945, Baldwin and Benson undertook a six-week trip to the
middle and far western states, to gauge local political situations, assess NCAPC’s
prospects, and help grow the progressive base. From meetings with CIO officials,
independent liberals, and Democratic Party leaders, NCPAC’s emissaries sensed that the
prestige of NCPAC was high. Public interest was also greater than expected. In addition
to receiving extensive, and largely positive press coverage, Baldwin and Benson’s
itinerary unexpectedly included large public meetings in several cities, including three in
L.A. alone.
Generally, they found, the Democratic Party was not progressive or lacked mass
organizing potential or both. Southern California, Washington State, and Utah proved the
only exceptions to this rule. Accordingly, liberals were often reluctant to associate with
the Democratic Party. Sometimes, this tendency was connected to an impulse toward
third party-ism in which only previously active progressives could be trusted to take the
lead. The Truman Administration’s apparent moves away from FDR’s New Deal
agenda—including the appointment of Secretary Byrnes, the resignation of Morgenthau,
and the failure to advance the FEPC and unemployment bills—fostered skepticism and
generated difficulty in mobilizing the base.
200
Despite these challenges, NCPAC’s leaders
contended that the real obstacles to building active local affiliates among an eager public
were “staff and financial limitations.”
201

202

200
[C. B. Baldwin?], [untitled] Report, [undated], Baldwin Papers, Box 18; Baldwin to President Harry S.
Truman, 8 October 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19. These moves included the appointment of Secretary
Byrnes, the resignation of Morgenthau, and the failure to advance the FEPC and unemployment bills.
201
[C. B. Baldwin?], [untitled] Report, [undated], Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
126
Drawing on the information gleaned from their trip and other sources, Baldwin,
Benson and the staff worked out a national plan of action that would concentrate limited
funds and staff in key states. Among the first tier of states in which committees would be
established and substantial resources devoted, were California, Connecticut,
Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, and
North Dakota.
203
By November, organizations were operating in all them, along with
metropolitan councils and neighborhood chapters.
204
The New York City and Los
Angeles chapters were the largest, with more than a dozen neighborhood affiliates each.

New York
NCPAC’s New York activism took place in the context of dense network of
progressive organization. In September 1945, for instance, New York’s State Committee
approved the affiliation of pre-existing neighborhood councils with the state body. By
January 1946, NCPAC had established fifteen chapters in the city and one in the
suburban South Shore town Long Beach—the most of any metropolitan region.
Manhattan chapters included Upper West Side, Greenwich Village, East Midtown, Lower
Midtown, Chelsea, and Washington Heights. Brooklyn chapters included Crown Heights,
Flatbush, and a catch-all “Brooklyn” chapter. Queens had chapters in Forest Hills, Long

202
Baldwin to President Harry S. Truman, 8 October 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
203
Steering Committee Minutes, 19 September 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 2.
204
Steering Committee Minutes, 29 November 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 1; Steering Committee
Minutes, 9 January 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
127
Island City and Garden Bay Manor, and West Park. Staten Island and the West Bronx
each had chapters of their own.
205
These neighborhood groups maintained their
independence with regard to local issues, policies, and candidates.
206

There was also close collaboration with many other organizations on an on-going
basis. Every other week, the New York chapters of eight different groups met to discuss
current issues and to combine efforts when they were in agreements.
207
In addition to
NCPAC and ICCASP, these groups included two Popular Front organizations—
American Veterans Committee and the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, two
largely African-American civil rights groups—the NAACP and the National Urban
League—as well as two lower profile groups—Americans United and Friends of
Democracy. And as early as April 1946, NCPAC leaders met with representatives of the
American Labor Party, CIO-PAC, ICCASP and other independent progressives.
Collectively they decided on a strategy for “strengthening of this coalition and making it
mean something in terms of candidates” in the November elections. In August, this same
coalition issued a joint statement of policy. Together, “the advantage of a strong labor
movement” and the “drawing together all progressive groups” would hopefully generate
important electoral victories come November. Nisselson reported there was “no sense of
rivalry with the ICC[ASP]” which because of its limited resources could only jointly
sponsor a few events.

205
Steering Committee Minutes, 9 January 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19. Despite Potofsky’s initial
urgings, upstate committees still remained to be formed.
206
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 3.
207
Blum, “National Citizens,” 51.
128

Los Angeles
Los Angeles was second only to New York in its concentration of NCPAC
activity. As in New York and other centers of strength, organizing efforts drew upon a
deep base of support that was already mobilized. Angelenos began to figure prominently
among NCPAC’s leaders soon after the group’s leadership and mission expanded in the
wake of FDR’s passing. Famed Hollywood director and committed progressive activist
Orson Welles became one of the first new members of national NCPAC after FDR’s
death. Mrs. William Dieterle, who tapped into the wealth of her husband—a financially
successful film producer who had emigrated from Germany—and networks of Jewish
and German émigrés, became a vice chairperson and member of the national finance
committee.
208
Harry Braverman, businessman, close Carey McWilliams associate, and
leader of L.A.’s Eastside Jewish community came on board upon the suggestion of Clark
Foreman.
209
He successfully reached out to Seniel Ostrow, Sealy Mattress Company
owner, and unsuccessfully to Judge Lester Roth.
210

Shortly after, Braverman fulfilled what would become a key role of Angeleno
progressives by urging that the lack of “Negro” and “Mexican” representatives from

208
Steering Committee Minutes, 25 April 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
209
Steering Committee Minutes, 25 April 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19. This Braverman was not the same
one as the Marxist economist who published Labor and Monopoly Capital, (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1974).
210
Steering Committee minutes, 4 May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 4. Robert Kenny, California’s
pioneering attorney general, declined an invitation to be vice-chairman due to his official responsibilities,
but he would soon became a principal leader.
129
California be rectified.
211
Angeleno activists consistently pushed the national NCPAC to
organize the grassroots more aggressively. As Hillman reported from his May 1945 visit,
the local chapter of NCPAC held meetings every two weeks to discuss various political
and social problems. Despite charging 75 cents for attendance, the first meeting drew
over 800 people to hear Orson Welles speak.
212
In late June, Angeleno Morris A. Halprin,
in New York for business, reiterated that L.A.’s chapter had sent many letters and wires
to indicate their “desire [for] instruction from the national office.” They wanted literature
and good speakers from the national office, and felt that such assistance would benefit
not only L.A. but the entire organization nationwide. Hillman’s visit, for example, had
provided an “immeasurable” boost to the “spirit of the committee.”
213
While New York’s
plan of action was to be mailed around to other states, Los Angeles was already
mobilized. California trailed only New York in the amount of money contributed to
NCPAC’s fundraising campaign.
214

NCPAC had begun operating during the 1944 election campaign, and its activities
and membership had accelerated since then. NCPAC’s local leadership was strong and
diverse. Both the present and previous chairmen of the L.A. County Democratic Party
were members of NCPAC’s executive committee. Women occupied both top slots.
Dieterle chaired the organization and Minneola K. Post served as the Executive Director.

211
Steering Committee Minutes, 4 May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 4.
212
Steering Committee Minutes, 6 June 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
213
Steering Committee Minutes, 20 June 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19. Another Angeleno contribution
was to stress the importance of bringing farmers into NCPAC.
214
Steering Committee Minutes, 25 July 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 2;
130
Progressive businessmen from the Jewish community included Braverman, Mrs. Milton
Gunzburg, Morton A. Halprin, Mendel Lieberman, Samuel O. Sprager, and Seniel
Ostrow. Augustus Hawkins, the Assembly’s only black representative served, as did
Mexican-American community leader Mario Carranza. Jerome Posner of the
Amalgamated and California CIO-PAC, as well as George Roberts of the Rubber
Workers represented labor. Orson Welles led the Hollywood contingent. There were
well-known activists such as Ben Margolis, Carey McWilliams and Jacob Zeitlin. And
Anglo progressives included Mrs. T. H. Eckerson, Kenneth I. Fulton, Rollin McNitt,
Michael Rudolph, Clore Warne, Margarete Clark and Judge Lester Roth. Its executive
committee represented a “broad cross-section of liberal citizens of Los Angeles and
Hollywood,” according to a memo from the national office, although its ties to the
industrial union movement were not as strong as they might have been.
215

Other notable charter members of the organization included Jewish Eastside
cinema owner Jack Y. Berman, Rev. Clayton D. Russell—the African-American leader
of the multiracial People’s Independent Church, Mexican-American newspaper publisher
Ignacío Lopez from the San Gabriel Valley, German émigré author Thomas Mann, life
insurance executive Oscar Pattiz and Hollywood figures Yip Harbug, Gene Kelly, and
Bela Lugosi. In addition to the main organization headquartered in West Los Angeles
(954 S. La Brea), auxiliary chapters quickly sprung up: the South Bay Forum in
Manhattan Beach headed by Victor Colton and the Long Beach chapter led by George
Shibley.

215
[C. B. Baldwin?], Report on “California,” [n.d.], Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
131
On Benson’s and Baldwin’s cross-country trip, in the summer of 1945, Southern
California stood out considerably. Compared to almost every other city NCPAC leaders
visited, progressive organizing in Los Angeles was more advanced and progressives there
were more dominant in the Democratic Party. The most influential and popular
Democratic leader in the state was Attorney-General Robert Kenny, an ideologically
committed progressive as well as a sophisticated politician. In the Southland, popular
involvement in Democratic clubs and the participation of CIO membership in the party
were encouraged, in contrast to Democratic machines in the Bay Area.
216

In particular, Benson was “impressed by the fact that in California people with
varying political shades seem to be able to sit down together and discuss intelligently
their practical political problems.” NCPAC agreed to help a broad range of California
liberal representatives including Ned Healey, Doyle, Miller, and Havenner. The central
challenge, Baldwin concluded, was to deepen connections to both labor groups and
businesspeople while extending beyond Hollywood and the L.A. County. In contrast, the
Bay Area was far more tentative. Only four days of meetings finally convinced CIO
leaders there to embrace NCPAC, which they feared would disturb their working
arrangements with entrenched Democratic Party leaders.
217

216
Los Angeles was the site of more activity than any of the other places they visited. Only in Utah and
Washington State was the Democratic Party equally progressive and potentially able to mobilize people on
a mass scale.
217
Steering Committee minutes, 19 September 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 3; Steering Committee
Minutes, 5 September 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19; [C. B. Baldwin?], Report on “California,” [n.d.],
Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
132
During the four days Baldwin and Benson stayed in Los Angeles, they embarked
on a flurry of activity that the local leadership had arranged. Thursday afternoon included
a press conference and a meeting with the local board to work through several pressing
problems. A CIO-PAC meeting began Friday, August 3, followed by a lunch fundraiser
emceed by Orson Welles for the fifty leading progressive businessmen in town, meetings
with leaders in the Democratic Party and HICCASP, and finally, the organization’s first
ever membership meeting which drew more than 1,000 attendees on the strength of
Welles, Benson and Baldwin’s presence. Saturday featured a lunch with Ben Solnit and
an evening party at the home of Herman Weiss, for forty people who might become
interested in NCPAC. On Sunday, Benson gave a speech to more than 1,000 attendees at
an open meeting of the Citizens Committee vs. KFI.
218
Competition with the Hollywood
Democratic Committee over similar missions, membership and fundraising sources
appeared to have abated, Baldwin later reported, with the HDC’s move to concentrate on
its impact in mass media (e.g. writing speeches, preparing shows, producing radio
programs), thus delegating the work of mass organizing to NCPAC and other progressive
organization.
219

Among the leaders with whom Benson and Baldwin met were Mayor Bowron,
County Supervisor John Anson Ford, Democratic operative Michael Fanning, and
Charlotta Bass, publisher of influential African-American newspaper, California Eagle.
One extraordinary cocktail party at the Dieterle home in Canoga Park included such

218
Baldwin to Minneola K. Post, 27 July 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
219
[C. B. Baldwin?], Report on “California,” [n.d.], Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
133
prominent German émigrés author Thomas Mann, social theorist Max Horkheimer,
playwright Bertold Brecht, and producer Leon Feuchtwanger among others, as well as
Hollywood producer Walter Wanger and CIO leader Jerome Posner.
220

In addition to donating money and attending general meetings, L.A. NCPAC
offered opportunities to serve on an array of committees—legislative analysis,
fundraising, creating publicity, recruiting more members, deepening the existing
organization, doing office work, research and writing educational material, creating
visual materials, and serving as a representative to local groups.
221

L.A. had only one fewer local chapter than New York City and outpaced Boston
and Baltimore, the other leading cities in this regard. Chapters included Glendale
Citizens, East Hollywood, Santa Monica, 63rd AD, 74th AD (Laguna), Migdal, Long
Beach, Manhattan Beach, Beverly-Western, 65th AD, 55th AD, 65th AD, North
Hollywood, City Terrace, and Students. The Bay Area, in contrast had only city-wide
chapters in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, San Jose and Martinez.
222

The Complications of Local Organizing in a National Organization
In addition to backing the national program, state affiliates were charged with
developing their own activities, maintaining financial self-sufficiency, and endorsing

220
[C. B. Baldwin?], Report on “California,” [n.d.], Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
Packed schedule – met with incredibly impressive roster of political, labor, and cultural leaders – insert
details from packet..
221
“How You Can HELP by L.A. NCPAC,” Baldwin Papers, Box 18.
222
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 April 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
134
local candidates.
223
Yet while they made their own endorsement decisions, they were
strongly influenced by the central New York office, which sent out voting records on key
issues, publications, and advice for particular situations. Most chapters received funds
from the New York office and new chapters were the seeded by organizers employed by
the national office. New York led the way in state operations, although it posed many
unique challenges. Much of the national group’s budget was raised there, and in turn, it
seems that, the national paid many of the local group’s expenses.
224

Local organizing in New York was especially complicated by the fact that as the
seat of NCPAC’s headquarters and the preeminent national center of progressive activity,
the metropolis’ resources were asked to do double-duty. In July 1945, for instance, the
national steering committee debated which was the most appropriate body to contact New
York’s Congressional delegation. Nisselson had suggested inviting them to a NCPAC
meeting, but Walsh thought the local New York group should take on such a
responsibility. The group compromised on Abraham Zeitz’s suggestion that the national
group could issue invitations to discuss national issues, but that the New York group
could offer separate invitations to discuss local issues and form delegations to lobby at
congressional offices. In 1945, New York also far outstripped other cities and states in its
cumulative financial contribution to NCPAC’s fundraising campaign. In summer and
early fall of 1946, too, the fundraising campaign was “carried on primarily in New York
City.” In the years to come, the question of how to apportion these funds between the

223
Memo, 21 May 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
224
Blum, “National Citizens,” 90.
135
metropolitan and the national office would bedevil NCPAC’s successors.
225
These
dynamics were among the primary (and continually recurring) tensions at the intersection
of attempts to build a vehicle for progressive power and the fragmentation of the U.S.
political system across an entire continent.

Governance
Formally, the National Council was NCPAC’s governing body. Each state was
represented in proportion to its population, as set by the number of Electoral College
members. The National Executive Board worked between National Council Meetings,
while the Administrative Committee of the Board made day-to-day decisions.
226
From
the early summer of 1945 through the middle of 1946, NCPAC’s Council and Board
expanded beyond even their impressive initial rosters to become a “a who’s who” of
liberals and progressives. In July 1945, Paul O’Dwyer and Sandy Liverwright, director of
American Council on Race Relations, came on board.
227
In November 1945, Elinor S.
Gimbel and Mel Douglas joined the group’s senior leadership.
228

By April, the board included standing committees on Administration, Finance,
Legislative and Program, Farm, Veterans, Organizational Liaison, Discrimination. To
give a sense of the leadership’s prominence and diversity, take the Legislative and

225
Steering Committee Minutes, 25 July 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 2; Steering Committee Minutes,
15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 1.
226
Blum, “National Citizens,” 91.
227
Steering Committee Minutes, 11 July 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 4.
228
Steering Committee Minutes, 29 November 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 2.
136
Program Committee. Under the chairmanship of New Republic journalist Bruce Bliven,
there served John Abt, Clark Foreman, Robert Kenny, Freda Kirchewey, Max Lerner,
Lucy Randolph Mason, Michael Nisselson, Martin Popper, Morris Rosenthal, Michael
Straight, Channing Tobias, Raymond Walsh, and Louis S. Weiss. Led by Channing
Tobias—the long-time head of the YMCA’s “Colored Work Department” and a member
of the NAACP board—prominent names on Discrimination Committee included W.
Russell Bowie, Will Maslow, Francis E. McMahon, Louis S. Weiss, and the wife of
leading Reform rabbi Stephen S. Wise. From Los Angeles, Ostrow and Dieterle served
on the Finance Committee, Edward Mosk was on the Steering Committee, and Evans
Carlson and Orson Welles were Vice-Chairmen.
229

Even as NCPAC became a membership-based organization, it retained the top-
down structure inherited from its founding. The national office never collected dues or
compiled a membership registry. If someone donated money, they began to receive the
group’s publications and were classified a member. State committees generally did not
report those who joined to the national organization. The national group’s leadership
remained hesitant to restructure. If the membership chose the leadership, it might oust the
existing leaders. The possibility of outsize Communist influence lurked. And there were
more mundane worries that total dues would fall short of the money necessary to pay for
“servicing” members.
230

229
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 April 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
230
Blum, “National Citizens,” 49.
137
Animating Myths and Theories of Change
But the leadership did believe in the need local action to achieve political
transformation. In Baldwin’s words, “NCPAC’s role in the continuing struggle is
apparent: to extend the network of state organizations so that the efforts of liberals – our
intellectual displaced persons – could be channelized and directed; and at the same time
to take the initiative in effecting an active, working coalition of progressive organizations
and thus strengthen and unify the scattered liberal forces.”
231
The principal problem was
not public opposition, or even pushback from wealthy interests, in these progressives’
diagnosis. It was an institutional mismatch and fragmentation that left elite and ordinary
progressives without an organization to call their own and coordinate their work.
The other aspect of NCPAC’s theory of social change was its belief that strong
voter turnout boded well for progressives. Drawing on studies that showed the relative
low turnout of working-class citizens, NCPAC’s belief was underpinned by positive
assumptions about the wisdom of the American people and the naturally progressive slant
of the working-class in particular.
232
If progressives could organize themselves, they
would be able to mobilize the American people more generally, and thus achieve
electoral and then policy victory.
Wallace insisted publicly and privately on the need to work within the Democratic
Party, but privately Baldwin said there was still no strategy for how to surmount “unholy
coalition of forces between the two parties.” Baldwin articulated what was to become a

231
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 1.
232
Blum, “National Citizens,” 100.
138
key trope of left-liberals when he argued that a third party, as distasteful as it might be,
could become a necessity if the Democrats “continue[d] on road to reaction as in the past
eighteen months.” In this widespread meme, strategic partisan decisions depended
entirely on the perceived need for better policies, rather than the feasibility of such
action.
233

At NCPAC’s School for Political Action Techniques, in D.C. during June,
criticism of President Truman and speculation about the creation of a third party
percolated. Although DNC Chair Hannegan and Republican Senator Morse of Oregon
each proclaimed that his party could serve as vessel for progressive politics, there were
cries for “Wallace in ’48.” The techniques learned at NCPAC’s school could thus be used
to sway the Democratic Party or to create a third party out of whole cloth.
234
Thus, when
NCPAC replicated the school in key urban centers, politicians and newspapers attacked
them fiercely, fearing the potential of grassroots progressive power to upend established
political arrangements.
235

Growing Strength
By 1946, NCPAC had developed impressively. From mass meetings and
neighborhood chapters to advocacy of media reform and effective use of the airwaves,

233
MacDougall, Gideon’s Army, 54- 57.
234
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 1-2; Report on National
Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 3. Blum, “National Citizens,” 110.
235
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 1-2; Report on National
Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 3; Blum, “National Citizens,” 110.
139
NCPAC was building the foundation of a mass, national organization. Combining
national progressive leaders with local elites and a broad-based membership, NCPAC
united virtually all factions of a broad progressive liberal movement. Older strands of
maternalist reformers (women such as Florence Kelley who came out of the settlement
house movement and social work profession) and early twentieth century good
government-types (men such as Judge Francis Heney who had aimed to root out
government corruption) combined with people from the labor, racial equality, civil
society, business, publishing, and entertainment worlds.
In April 1946, NCPAC’s board approved the affiliation of the National Council of
Scientific, Professional, Art and White Collar Organizations, an umbrella group that
covered forty-two different organizations. In June, fifteen of its leaders joined the
NCPAC executive committee, and four joined the steering committee—Kirtley F. Mather
of the American Association of Social Workers, Olive Van Horn of the YWCA national
board, Dr. Melber Philips of the Federation of American Scientists, and Evelyn Adler.
236

That spring, in preparation for the primary election season, NCPAC re-established
divisions for Women, Businessmen, and Youth.
237
The first two principally worked to
raise funds. Under Blanche Mahler its Women’s Division had been revitalized. Now led
by Mary Warburg and Ruth Field as co-chairs, this Division was holding a women’s
luncheon before the rally at Madison Square Garden and initiating a School for Women

236
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 April 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
237
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 April 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19.
140
Voters in New York.
238
More than 300 women attended a series of eight lectures, spread
out over October, which included appearances by Eleanor Roosevelt, Phillip Murray,
Chester Bowles and others, and succeed in raising funds as well as educating participants.
The extremely active Women’s Division succeeded in raising funds and notice, although
it failed almost totally in its nearly total neglect of less well-to-do women.
239
(Mrs. John
Hammond, Jr., Miss Peggy LeBoutiller, and Mrs. Stephens Wiman led fundraising efforts
among well-to-do women.
240
) Under Paul Tishman’s leadership, the Businessmen’s
Division began raising considerable sums of money, although with much fewer activities
than the Women’s Division.
241

As of August 1946, national NCPAC had raised enough funds to meet their
current obligations, but the leadership borrowed more money in order to hire fundraising
staff so they could raise the monumental sum of $200,000 to be directed toward the 1946
general election and strengthening NCPAC. Finance Director Abraham Zeitz reported to
the Steering Committee that the fundraising initiative was heavily concentrated in New
York City. The side effect was a packed program of political education in the city. On
September 12, 1946, for instance, NCPAC and ICCASP co-hosted a massive rally at
Madison Square Garden with Commerce Secretary Wallace, Sen. Claude Pepper, Frank
Kingdon and an entertaining show. On October 31, the two organizations jointly held

238
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 1-2.
239
Blum, “National Citizens,” 91.
240
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 4-5. There were 10
mass rallies and dinner from October 28 to November 4.
241
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 4-5.
141
“Meet the Candidates Dinner” to boost gubernatorial candidate James Mead.
242
Outside
of New York, meetings were being held in Providence, Boston, New Haven,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Los Angeles to raise funds and publicity for
important races.
243

The apparent success of NCPAC’s meetings and grassroots organizing led to a
more ambitious program. NCPAC replicated its School for Political Action Techniques in
key urban centers: New York, Boston, Hartford, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Los
Angeles, Philadelphia, and Columbia, Missouri.
244
The organization’s “Religious
Associates” branch grew from 500 to 800 members, with especially active branches in
Boston, Chicago, Detroit, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
245

246

247

NCPAC exerted itself impressively throughout the campaign season. Between
April and November, NCPAC distributed nearly one million pieces of its own literature,

242
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 1-2.
243
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 1-2
244
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, pp. 1-2; Report on National
Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 3. Blum, “National Citizens,” 110.
245
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 2.
246
Blum, “National Citizens,” 38. Despite NCPAC’s considerable growth, significant weak-spots
remained. The organization remained firmly centered in the nation’s metropolitan regions. Its considerable
efforts to reach farmers failed to achieve their objectives. NCPAC criticized proposed taxes on cooperatives
and publicly sought to lower the cost of farmer’s supplies, sustain profitable prices for farm products,
maintain the OPA’s price controls, and export American produce to those starving overseas. Despite
advocating policies that appealed to many farmers, there is no indication that many farmers joined the
organization.
247
And although its fundraising program succeeded in paying off the group’s obligation through the primary
campaign, the group failed to take in as much money as it spent during the general election season. Blum,
“National Citizens,” 97.
142
mostly at the expense of state chapters. Sometimes, states customized materials for their
own situations, while the national office dealt with broader, more complex issues.
In partnership with the allied progressive cultural organization—the Independent
Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions (ICCASP)—NCPAC produced a
series of twelve nonpartisan registration and vote spot announcements and distributed
them through radio broadcasts and sound trucks. With CIO-PAC, NCPAC crafted series
of issue-focused radio spots and created twelve skits for use by the staff on the radio.
248
A
profitable direct mail campaign across the country generated 200,000 letters and 25,000
coin cards. In the week before Election Day, ten mass rallies and fundraising dinners
took place in cities across the country.
249

The single most consequential event was a massive rally in Madison Square
Garden on September 12, 1946, co-hosted with ICCASP. Henry Wallace spoke against
the escalation of the Cold War and Truman, in turn, dismissed him from his position as
Secretary of Commerce.
250
(Although Truman had given prior approval for the speech, it
seemed to contradict the Administration policy in other respects and Truman took the
opportunity to “get tough.”)

248
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 3.
249
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 4-5.
250
Steering Committee Minutes, 15 August 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 1-2;
Mark L. Kleinman, A World of Hope A World of Fear: Henry A. Wallace, Reinhold Niebuhr, and American
Liberalism (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2000), 209.
143
Finding Disunity in Unity: The Fate of the Popular Front
The fifteen months since FDR’s death had witnessed a rise in tensions between
the Truman and the liberal wing of the New Deal coalition. Truman steadily dismissed
nearly all FDR’s cabinet members—Francis Biddle, Claude Wickard, Frank Walker,
Henry Morgenthau, Frances Perkins, and Harold Ickes. Progressive leaders heard this as
the drumbeat of betrayal. The absence of any “cooling down” period after FDR’s death
led progressive leaders to glorify the late President in contrast to the new one, forgetting
about the former’s faults. Progressive leaders remained confident that FDR’s base of
support, however disorganized, remained theirs too. In a message to the board after the
1946 election, Baldwin expressed the group’s self-conception and its determination to
grow:
We have expanded so rapidly because we are filling a vacuum. Our
organization fills such a fundamental need that we must recognize that
even though wonders have been accomplished in the field in the basic
organizational work, we have barely scratched the surface. But the initial
painful spadework is almost completed. Now we are gaining momentum.
In 1947 and 1948 we must turn the vague mass of frustrated liberals into a
powerful tightly-knit progressive bloc.
251

Nearly all left-liberals had grown frustrated with the Truman administration, for
seeming to retreat from FDR’s social democratic ambitions, shying away from labor, not
fighting for price control, weakening on civil rights, and appointing many conservatives
to offices in the Democratic Party and the Executive Branch. But a fault line was

251
Report on National Office Activities, December 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 5. Note the
continuing use of liberal and progressive as synonyms.
144
beginning to reemerge among left-liberals. The issue was Communism, at home and
abroad.
NCPAC progressives by and large opposed the increasingly aggressive posture of
Administration toward the Soviet Union and its apparent laxity in the battle against
fascism in Spain, Argentina, and Germany. But some within the organization began to
view the Soviet Union’s policies much less favorably and so were inclined to give
Truman the benefit of the doubt. As the rhetoric of Truman and the Soviets heated up,
resolutions on American foreign policy began to surface in most left-liberal
organizations. In a vicious circle, these resolutions foregrounded Communists’ and their
sympathizers’ fundamental commitments to the Soviet Union and some of their basic
differences with other progressives, despite many shared domestic priorities. Suspicions
of Communists spread as their rigid alignment with the Soviet Union once again took
primacy over all other political and policy considerations.
Indeed, from its start, NCPAC had never been entirely free from contention over
the participation of Communists. Sidney Hillman had initially established the
organization on terms that prevented them (or any other grassroots force) from gaining
any real influence. Still, Eleanor Roosevelt declined to take leadership in part because of
her worry that Communists had already gained a toehold in the organization through staff
positions. As early as the summer of 1945, the Steering Committee fiercely debated
whether to invite known Communist Herman Shumlin to the board, with many members
objecting.
252

252
Steering Committee Minutes, 11 July 1945, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, p. 4.
145
For many, especially those scarred by 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact’s devastating
repercussions of progressive groups, the issue focused on maintaining cohesive political
organizations in the face of single-minded and outside-coordinated pressures. Melvyn
Douglas, for instance, in a late September 1946 letter to Baldwin, expressed his worries
over the significant presence of Communist Party members in NCPAC and an allied
progressive cultural organization, the Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences,
and Professions (ICCASP). Douglas supported Wallace’s anti-Cold War speech to the
rally in New York, but he remained convinced that it was “not possible to work with the
Communists.”
253
He remembered how the Motion Picture Democratic Committee had
disintegrated in 1939 at the hands of Communists who, in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact, had turned against their anti-fascist allies.
NCPAC had been founded to make and keep the Democratic Party progressive.
Navigating this Odyssean task was no mean feat. Between the Scylla of estrangement
from the levers of partisan power and the Charybdis of servitude to partisan power
flowed only a very narrow slipstream of political possibility.
254
As long as Hillman was
around, he had insisted on working within the Democratic Party, even as he urged
support for principled candidates with little chance of success in the primaries and
general election.
255
After his death in the summer of 1946 and Wallace’s firing, the
balance began to tip towards a third party run.

253
Melvyn Douglas to Baldwin, 23 September 1946, Baldwin Papers, Box 19, Folder “Correspondence,
1945 - 1946.”
254
Blum, “National Citizens,” 37.
255
Fraser, Labor Will Rule, 570.
146
Through 1946 and 1947, however, anti-Communist progressives remained within
the fold of the PACs, even as ICCASP was floundering on the issue. They knew that only
the CIO, with its significant funding and institutional strengths, made possible a strong
coalition on the left of center, and the NCPAC still retained sufficient independence and
strength to make it worth fighting for.
At the end of 1946, NCPAC chose to merge with ICCASP for the sake of a
“united progressive movement.” Ironically, ICCASP was publicly tainted by the presence
of Communists in key staff and board positions. The creation of the merged
organization—the Progressive Citizens of America—provoked the establishment of the
anti-Communist American for Democratic Action. The organizational unity of
mainstream progressives was no more. NCPAC’s meteoric rise and fall was not merely
another facet of Popular Front and Cold War history. Its brief existence comprises a vital
chapter in a much longer historical process of creating a vehicle for progressive values in
mainstream, partisan electoral and legislative politics.
147
CHAPTER THREE
ORGANIZING IN AN ERA OF MASS CULTURE: THE ORIGINS OF
HOLLYWOOD LIBERALISM AND THE RISE OF THE MOTION PICTURE
DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE

As Chapter One demonstrates, the mass, “broadcast” nature of the era’s
predominant media (film, radio, metropolitan dailies) combined with the fragmentation of
the American political system to foster an electoral politics dependent on symbolic and
unifying national figures such as FDR, rather than ideologically consistent parties or
other mass-based political organizations. Nationally, Chapter One has shown, the lack of
open partnership between the progressives and the Democratic Party led to the episodic
formation of electoral institutions for mobilizing progressive activists that did not build
power over the long haul, but instead served the interests of FDR’s reelection and then
dissolved despite the misgivings of grassroots activists.
This is much to learn from a study of the same relationship at different scale, with
a different focus. This chapter considers the beginnings of the relationship between the
producers and public figures of mass culture, specifically those in its greatest center—
Los Angeles—and the American political system, and the Democratic Party in particular.
Indeed, Los Angeles became the leading edge of efforts to leverage popular cultural
appeals on behalf of progressive electioneering and lobbying efforts because of two,
wholly unrelated factors: the rise of “Hollywood” as the world’s entertainment capital
and the potential capacity of a formerly weak Democratic Party in L.A. and California to
serve as a vehicle for progressive causes.
148
In the story of the progressive politicization of Hollywood, it is possible to see
how disparate, yet overlapping communities converged on the ground and eventually
coalesced into a new progressive cohort, ready and primed for political action.
Unraveling this process of relocation, resettlement, and community formation is a way to
demonstrate the contingency of politics. In an era of mass media, it shows the continuing
and vital importance of local webs of relationships to the forging of mass cultural
politics. And it demonstrates the great diversity of traditions that fused into Popular
Front-era liberalism, with important distinctions that did not map onto conventional left /
liberal divides and crucial commonalities that spread across nearly all political lines.
In the realm of electoral politics, the establishment of the Motion Picture
Democratic Committee in 1938 was the culmination of this process of political
coalescence. Although the Democratic Party had become progressive earlier in Southern
California than elsewhere as a result of the powerful impact of Upton Sinclair’s
gubernatorial candidacy in 1934, the slow development of a relationship between
Hollywood’s liberal left and the Democratic Party echoed patterns elsewhere in the U.S.
As elsewhere, the lack of a natural electoral home for liberals initially, a vehicle all their
own, inhibited the development of a powerful force to coordinate their efforts.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 doomed the Motion Picture Democratic Committee,
but the fact that the organization was barely a year old contributed to its weakness. Its
legacy would live on, however. Patterns formed as it collapsed and the implicit theories
of social change embedded in its ideology set a template for future organizing efforts in
Hollywood.
149
Organizing people to build power in any respect and especially in order to achieve
intentional social change, cannot be separated from the multiple ways in which people’s
lives are already organized—by patterns of thought, by daily routines, by their
relationship to work, to home, to leisure, to existing political and social institutions of all
sorts. Organizing is reorganizing. If the organization of people’s lives is changing, if their
quotidian routines are shifting in significant ways, effective political organizing must
follow. New forms of communication are some of the most important ways in which
modern society’s organization and its peoples’ quotidian routines have shifted. New
media implies a new social organization and a new social geography. This was as evident
in the 1930s as at any time. The motion picture industry—synonymous with
Hollywood—was the latest in a wave of communications technologies that had enabled
the rise of new forms of cultural expression, and with it, new forms of political
mobilization, real and potential.
256

The advent of every new medium—from colonial-era pamphlets to metropolitan
newspapers to the radio—had wrought important changes in the structure of society and
culture. And canny politicians were quick to take advantage of new media to more
effectively organize and mobilize their support—from the pamphlets of the colonial era
to Mark Hanna’s massive public relations effort for the 1896 presidential campaign of
William McKinley to FDR’s masterful “fireside chats” over the radio. Each new medium,
however, worked its own qualitatively particular set of changes on the landscape of

256
Steve J. Ross, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011).
150
politics – forging new relationships between people’s quotidian lives and the structures of
politicking and policy-making. In their initial partisan form, local newspapers had
reinforced a politics centering on partisan differences. In their newer “objective” form,
metropolitan newspapers undermined “corrupt” party rule and helped to launch a
discourse of “the people versus the interests,” in which popular political participation
revolved less around local party organizations and more on media-based election-time
mobilizations, less on deliberation over ideas and more on interest group claims, and the
“gotcha” politics of muck-racking and spectacles.
257

The rise of nation-wide mass entertainment in the form of radio and silent film
created another specific set of effects. It undermined the public spheres centered in ethnic
and class specific communities and substituted a mass orientation, which integrated
different communities into a similar set of cultural referents. It gave concrete images to
substantiate the notion of “the people” which had coursed through American political
culture, and had gained additional power in the era of Populism and Progressivism. The
American populace, although still far from homogenous, came to share a culture across
the nation (and in many cases, across the world with peoples who had also began to
receive American-produced products).
258

257
Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); James
J. Connolly, The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Philip J. Ethington, The Public City: The Political
Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
258
On the culture of Americanism, see Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth
Century, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An
American History (New York: Basic Books, 1995); Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of
American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1997); Wendy Wall, Inventing the
"American Way": The Politics of Consensus From the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2008)
151
In the 1930s, the newest and most influential medium was the “talkies” format
that swept through the motion picture industry. The introduction of sound to mass-
distributed films worked a potent double transformation. First, it accelerated the growing
popularity of movies and expanded Hollywood’s cultural appeal and power. Incredibly,
when the husband-and-wife sociology team of Robert and Helen Lynd returned to
Middletown only a few years after their famous initial case-study of small town Indiana,
they discovered that “the movie idols have usurped the role of Society in establishing
styles.”
259

Second, it transformed the geography of cultural production in general. If New
York remained the U.S.’s cultural capital—center of the Eastern establishment, home to a
fervent efflorescence of leftist immigrant and bohemian cultures and the soon-to-be
inheritor of the high art pre-eminence from European’s war-torn cities—Los Angeles-
centered “Hollywood,” had become the base for the attention-garnering celebrity of
leading actors, who, together with the behind-the-scenes talent of writers, directors, and
technicians, captured the imagination of America and much of the urbanized world.
Especially with the rise of “talkie” motion pictures, the need for new talents–writers and
voice actors–attracted a massive influx of new people to Hollywood–many from left-
leaning metropolitan enclaves in metropolitan New York, Chicago, and Europe. Many
new arrivals were especially attracted to using Hollywood’s increasing cultural influence
to foster a more just society. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, however, they found a

259
Quoted in Ronald Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1990), 74.
152
landscape that bore little resemblance to the counter-cultural centers from which many
had emigrated.
And yet Los Angeles became the site of cultural workers’ initial systemic
engagement with this messy business of campaigns and legislating in the United States.
The formation of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee (MPDC) in the spring of
1938 was the first attempt to leverage culture workers’ abilities toward progressive
electoral and legislative ends. The MPDC built on the political consciousness and
institutions that had formed within Hollywood since the early 1930s. At the decade’s
start, the notion of creating an organization whose purpose was to support mass
progressive politicking and electioneering was virtually non-existent. During the
intervening years, however, class politics within the studios, and the overreach of studio
moguls’ partisan activism combined with the specter of fascism sweeping across Europe,
to spur increasing involvement in progressive causes among Hollywood’s stars and its
rank and file.

Seeds of Transformation
The initial seeds of Hollywood’s liberal leanings originate in the emergence of a
radical artistic ethos several decades prior. Artists, entertainers, and intellectuals—
hereafter “culture workers” (to borrow Michael Denning’s term)—are not inherently
progressive—their position as such was contingent on many historical twists of fate.
260

260
On the concept of “culture workers,” see Denning, The Cultural Front, 48-50.
153
If early nineteenth century intellectuals and artists grew intoxicated on Romantic
nationalisms and idealist spiritualisms, by the late nineteenth century a more
cosmopolitan “Lyrical Left” had coalesced. Its “young intellectuals,” John P. Diggins
writes, “cheerfully presided over the death of the ‘genteel tradition’ as they attacked its
Victorian standards, its polite manners and haut-bourgeois tastes, its Puritan heritage and
decorous Brahmin literature, and, above all, its condescending certainty that it had found
ultimate truth and absolute value.”
261
Blending literary and aesthetic modernism with a
commitment to struggle and progress across national borders, the Lyrical Left found an
important home in the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs, in the bohemian ferment of such
neighborhoods as Greenwich Village and Harlem, and in various progressive muckraking
and settlement house activities from Jane Addam’s Hull House to Upton Sinclair’s
exposé of the food industry.
262

The Lyrical Left’s cosmopolitan vision, in which the universalist strains of Anglo-
Americanism came to serve as more than pretext for self-satisfied ethnocentrism, was
embodied by the writings of Randolph Bourne.
263
For the United States, Bourne
envisioned “a freely mingling society of peoples of very different racial and cultural

261
John P. Diggins, The Rise and Fall Of The American Left, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), 97.
262
Radicalism among writers, artists, actors and other workers in the “kingdom of culture” extends far
back into past. Intellectuals, of one sort or another, were at the forefront of the revolutionary Enlightenment
movements to mark modernity as a break with the “Dark Ages” and a return to the glories of Classical
antiquity. Intellectuals in France and Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, were among the
most fervent advocates of various schemes for progress. To be sure, these projects were laden were
contradictions and oppressions of their own. The point, however, is their antipathy to existing forms of
society in the name of far-reaching transformation for the sake of universal humanistic aims.
263
Edward Abrahams, The Lyrical Left: Randolph Bourne, Alfred Stieglitz, and the Origins of Cultural
Radicalism in America (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986). Eric P. Kaufman, The Rise and
Fall of Anglo-America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
154
antecedents, with a common political allegiance and common social ends but with free
and distinctive cultural allegiances which may be placed anywhere in the world.”
264
This
was no “rootless” cosmopolitanism, but one grounded in both old homelands and
critically, the mixed-metropolitan landscapes of early twentieth century America.
For the Lyrical Left, as for their political compatriots, World War I devastated
their cosmopolitan dreams. The Socialist party was especially torn, as various national
parties in Europe abandoned international solidarity in favor of patriotic allegiance.
American socialists, Anglo and immigrant alike, split over whether to support or oppose
U.S. involvement. Opposition came at the cost of great repression. Internationally, the
war enabled the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which instantly became an icon of
possibility for many progressives. It soon led to a major schism within the U.S. Socialist
Party, to fierce infighting among socialists, and to even greater repression from the
energized, red-baiting right-wing.
265

Without an encompassing organization to call home and with Americanism
discredited by its ugly turn to militarism, many members of the Lyrical Left became
expatriates. According to scholars Larry Ceplair and Steve Englund, “They did not feel at
home with the restructured Left, the glossy refurbishment of the American Dream

264
Randolph Bourne, “The Jew and Trans-National America,” Menorah Journal, 2:277-284 (December
1916), reprinted in War and the Intellectuals, Carl Resek, ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), 124.
In the same vein, see the work of Alain Locke, Bourne’s African-American contemporary: Alain Lock, The
Philosophy of Alain Locke: Harlem Renaissance and Beyond, L. Harris (ed.), (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1989).
265
James Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-25 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1986). In the US, as in many other countries, the pre-World War I nation-wide socialist movement
had foundered on the rocks of international conflict, the violent and putatively universal Bolshevik
Revolution, and fervent, repressive nationalism. Those generally most at home in the pre-war socialist
movement—Anglos—were left bereft of a movement to call their own.
155
(Roaring Twenties version), or the new, ‘Bolshevized’ Communist Party. They spent the
decade in search of a replacement. And just as the ‘movement’ had become atomized and
fragmented, so too the search became individualized. The searchers thought of
themselves as ‘exiles,’ orphans,’ or ‘lost.’ If their political opinions (they would not have
said ‘faith’) were strong and their minds critical, they were nonetheless isolated,
undisciplined, unorganized, hence ineffectual.”
266
It is well known that many of
America’s leading creative voices went abroad—Hemmingway, Dos Passos,
Cummings—in disgust with the U.S. scene. It is a less well-appreciated fact of political
history that such a turn was not limited to Eastern cultural elites. From Carey
McWilliams, son of bankrupted Colorado rancher to Luisa Moreno, daughter of the
Guatemalan elites, bohemianism exerted a powerful pull for a generation wary of the
1920s’ self-satisfied consumer culture. Indeed, the cohort’s pre-Depression experiences
served as fine preparation for the organizing of the 1930s. Bohemian culture
delegitimized the ethos of white middle-class conformity, skewered the authority of
social elites, and preserved a worldly, internationally-attuned orientation in contrast to the
narrow ethno-nationalism that predominated after World War I. The social networks that
emerged among the 1920s version of “counterculture” would prove useful to the activism
of the 1930s.
267
These people and their ways of understanding the world would feed into

266
Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-
1960 (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), 87.
267
Carey McWilliams, Oral History, “Honorable In All Things,” 1982, UCLA Oral History Program, 79;
Peter Richardson, American Prophet: The Life & Work of Carey McWilliams (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2005); Vicki L. Ruiz, “Una Mujer sin Fronteras: Luisa Moreno and Latina Labor
Activism” Pacific Historical Review 73, no. 1 (February 2004): 3.
156
the first of four main social groups that Michael Denning has identified at the heart of the
“Cultural Front”:
• “Anglo” Americans who had turned toward modernism and internationalism
against the “boobosie” culture of middle America;
• The children of working-class immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe;
• Blacks and Latinos moving to the cities in search of work;
• Central European artists and intellectuals fleeing the rise of fascism.
268

The Making of a Los Angeles Political Community
In the story of the progressive politicization of Hollywood, it is possible to see
how disparate, yet overlapping communities converged on the ground and eventually
coalesced into a new progressive cohort, ready and primed for political action.
Scholars have recounted the history of Los Angeles’ bohemia, its politics, and
those of Hollywood in isolation from one another. But they are vitally connected. The
key fact of the era is that the progressive cultural life in Los Angeles remained highly
fragmented until a wave of anti-fascist activity in the mid 1930s initiated new
connections. The small core of Angeleno bohemians had little interaction with the
Hollywood newcomers. Among film community workers, the two predominant groups—
émigrés from Europe and New Yorkers—led separate lives as well, congregating at
different homes and in different social circles. They rarely worked together on films;
studio chiefs tapped New Yorkers for the new urban genres and Europeans for the

268
Denning, The Cultural Front, xv-xvi.
157
“papier mache settings of Hollywood Mittleeuropa”, and dedicated themselves to
preventing any hint of political organizing.
269
Among Europeans, different national
groups—Hungarians, German, Austrians—also kept to themselves.
Los Angeles had been a small and distant outpost of counterculture throughout
most of its history as a U.S. city. Heavily settled in the early twentieth century by well-to-
do Midwesterners and planned as the antithesis of the teeming metropolises of Europe
and the U.S., Los Angeles lacked the cultural institutions that typified the diverse,
modern metropolises of the age. The Pasadena Playhouse was one of the region’s leading
cultural institutions and its fare was exemplified by Mission Play.
270
The dominant 1920s
culture centered on the Spanish Fantasy Past, as exemplified by the remaking of Olvera
Street and the flourishing of “Spanish” style banquets with clothing and food to match.
Protestant Christianity also dominated and so too did its puritanical prescriptions for self-
discipline and self-restraint.
271
The racially-mixed east and south sides, full of Jewish-,
Mexican-, Japanese-, Chinese-, and African-Americans were estranged from the cultural
life of the Anglo bastions of Pasadena and the Westside. Hollywood, the industry, and
Hollywood, the place, had only recently begun to become the sites of more cosmopolitan

269
Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Philadelpia:
Temple University Press, 2001), 41.
270
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 42.
271
On the Pasadena Playhouse, see Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 42 and the Chapter Six, “The
Drama of Los Angeles History,” in William F. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and
the Remaking of Its Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 206-249. On the
emergence of intellectual and bohemia communities in the region, see Kevin Starr, Material Dreams:
Southern California Through the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 305-351; Reuben
Borough, Oral History, “Reuben W. Borough and California Reform Movements,” 1968, UCLA Oral
History Program.
158
attitudes and creative expressions. There were only a few small enclaves of bohemian
counter-culture among middle-class Anglos, but they were quite important in the long run
because they would become key sources of progressive leadership by the mid-1930s—
bridges across which a coalition between white “plain folk” and the racially marginalized
could be constructed.
One of the few bastions of counterculture was among the writers and reporters
who gathered near downtown and Hollywood. Downtown, Rube Borough and other
newspapermen had founded the Pemicans and Pomegrantes Club and many cultural
dissidents gathered in Jacob “Jake” Zeitlin’s bookstore, first in the central city and then in
the Silver Lake area.
272
West of downtown, Stanley Rose’s bookstore on Hollywood
Boulevard operated as a speakeasy during Prohibition and after 1933 went on to become
a watering hole that served notables such as Gen Fowler, Horace McCoy, William
Faulkner, and Lester Cole.
273
Other pockets of bohemians and well-to-do Anglo socialists
existed in pockets stretching from Hollywood and downtown to the foothills of the San
Gabriel Mountains and the Arroyo Secco’s Southwest Museum founded by proto-
bohemian Charles Fletcher Lummis who had railed against U.S. imperialism in the
Spanish-American War. Many other “respectable” socialists clustered around author
Upton Sinclair’s home in Pasadena and Dr. John Randolph Haynes in Hollywood.

272
“Reuben W. Borough and California Reform Movements,” oral history transcript, 1968, UCLA Oral
History Program.
273
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 43.
159
The Hollywood newcomers quickly began to organize a cultural life for their
growing community. In Howard Koch’s words. “I don’t think it’s realized that perhaps
what Greenwich Village was in the late teens…that same vitality was transferred in this
period, the ND period, to Hollywood.” To Budd Schulberg, “It was almost as if the
Algonquin Round Table [a cluster of writers affiliated with the New Yorker magazine]
had been moved cross country into the Garden and under the Palm trees.”
274
Lacking
many progressive cultural spaces, much of Hollywood’s initial intellectual ferment took
place in salons at private homes. In 1934, Carey McWilliams noted the increasing
seriousness of Hollywood parlors where “Meetings are now held, at which the denizens
of Hollywood foregather to discuss the most portentous problems and to hail the dawn of
world Communism until about two o’clock in the morning when, their brows weary with
the travail of thought, they sojourn to some nearby café and apotheosize the new God of
their devotion.” John Bright recalled that “I was flattered to become part of what Sam
[Ornitz] called ‘Monsieur De Stael salon”, his comic designation for the group which
often came together at his unpretentious little Hollywood apartment. Mostly writers in the
main, it also included Guy Endore, John Wexley, Nathan Asch, Lester Cole, Vera
Caspary, and Bob Tasker. When they made the trip from Carmel, Lincoln Steffens, Ella
Winter, and Langston Hughes all joined in. The sessions were spirited, political and not
at all doctrinaire, laced with skepticism and gaiety, according to historian Saverio
Giovacchini.
275

274
Ibid., 18
275
Ibid., 45.
160
Émigrés frequently met at home of Salka Viertel, a former actress, screenwriter,
confidant of Greta Garbo, who moved to L.A. in 1928 with her husband, director
Berthold Viertel and remained after he left the city. Her home at 165 Mayberry Road was
a popular salon with people like Ernest Lubitsch, Fred Zinneman, and later Thomas and
Heinrich Mann. Other refugees from Germany included Ludwig Marcuse, Walter Reisch,
director Joe May and his wife Mia, Otto Preminge.
276
The home of Oskar Schindlers was
another center, at their modernist house on King’s Road.
It took several years until the film community’s activities reached a critical mass.
Cafes and cultural organizations developed slowly.
277
Despite the city’s “growing
intellectual life,” the Los Angeles Times reported, “you never hear of it in the papers.
Nothing said ever leaks out from behind closed doors.”
278
In Giovacchini’s words,
“With its cultural and geographical landscape dotted with ethnic enclaves, Hollywood
was reminiscent of lower Manhattan in the decades before WWI.” There was not even a
single organization to organize antifascist activity or to aid anti-Nazi refugees. The
German Jewish Club of 1933 only held social activities.
279
Moreover, class divisions
within the film community separated out those who were ordinary wage-earners from the

276
Ibid., 46.
277
Ibid., 14.
278
Ibid., 40.
279
Ibid., 46.
161
financially successful and those stars who earned more than $75,000 a year from
everyone else.
280

As in other times and places, effective political organizing relied on the existence
of quotidian social networks, communities, and institutions through which support could
be rallied and a shared set of meanings diffused. The “shop floors” of Hollywood studios
were one crucial set of sites; salons and cafes were another. And each wave of political
organization drew strength from the legacy of previous efforts. Personal relationships
formed in one struggle could be mobilized in another. Practical knowledge developed of
which strategies and tactics were most effective. Consciousness of the interrelationships
between different issues grew as activists confronted similar alignments of allies and
opponents, discourses and institutions. By 1938, when the Motion Picture Democratic
Committee (MPDC) formed, it was in a position to benefit from several waves of
activism—union organizing within the movie studios, stars’ involvement in Upton
Sinclair’s gubernatorial campaign, and widespread mobilizations against Nazism and
Spanish fascism.

Studio Labor Relations
In the early 1930s, what distinguished the mass entertainment industry was the
overwhelming imbalance of power between studio management and the “talent” which
made the industry possible. Glamorous stars, like everyone else, were locked into

280
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 431-33.
162
confining contracts.
281
Writers, in particular, were especially frustrated by their lack of
control over the disposition of the scripts they created.
282
With a group of pre-politicized
new arrivals from New York at their core, writers were the first to organize en masse and
would continue to provide the leadership of progressive organizations throughout this
period.
283
The spark that launched the writers into motion was MGM mogul Louis
Mayer’s insistence on 50% salary cuts in early 1933. Electricians and carpenters were
unionized and thus able to turn back Mayer’s demand: only people earning more than $50
per week were subject to the cuts. Creative types got the message. The company union,
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, would not be enough. In April 1933,
the Screen Writers Guild (SWG) organized, led by John Howard Lawson, famous later
for his position in the Communist Party (CP). Whereas participation in the SWG skewed
heavily to new arrivals from urban America—all the presidents, except one were New
Yorkers—, the anti-SWG company union consisted heavily of old-line Hollywoodians.
284

For the newcomers, the SWG began to root their identity in Hollywood and link their
political consciousness to it. Many, such as S. N. Behrman, began to see themselves at

281
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 40.
282
Ibid., 52.
283
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 43.
284
Ibid., 33, 74. The Academy was founded as a company union and only later did it become an
organization with a different purpose.
163
home in Hollywood and New York.
285
Several months later, the Screen Actors Guild
(SAG) formed around a less leftist core, including Eddie Cantor and Robert Montgomery.
Liberals were as active as leftists and Communists in expressing dissatisfaction.
286

Labor-management conflict continued powerfully over the next two decades. For many,
it planted a seed that would grow into intense political consciousness. And union
organizing would provide a springboard from which political efforts directed at broader
goals were launched.
287
Political splits emerged within these groups and producers were
unremitting in their attacks and red-baiting. Nonetheless, despite the strong left-liberal
slant of the unions, divisions within them did not always correspond the usual breakdown
of the political spectrum. Right-wingers like Charles Brackett and Morris Ryskind often
turned up on side of leftists like Lawson and Cole in battles within the union.
288

The Sinclair Campaign
The messy business of political campaigns became a priority for the culture
workers rapidly thereafter, in part because the moguls overreached by pushing their
electoral choices throughout the studio system. Democrats had long complained that
Mayer and other studio heads had bullied employees to support the Republican ticket, as

285
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 76; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 84. The
militant core of writers were catalysts but as the anti-fascist, reform oriented movement burgeoned this core
became a smaller proportion of the total membership
286
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 42.
287
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 76.
288
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 83-4.
164
in the 1928 and 1932 campaigns. But in the 1934 gubernatorial campaign against
socialist-cum-Democrat Upton Sinclair, the studios “leveraged their power much more
ruthlessly, and with more dramatic political effect.”
289

Sinclair’s campaign was a major affront to the movie executives on several levels.
His policy prescriptions were the mildest aspect. Higher taxes on the industry were the
most likely outcome of his win. He openly desired the nationalization of the industry, but
as governor would have lacked the authority and even the political strength necessary to
effect such change. Sinclair most threatened the prerogative and standing of the industry
leaders. Prior to his campaign, he had published “Upton Sinclair Presents William Fox,”
in which he aired Hollywood’s dirty dealings with their fellow mogul for the whole world
to read. And Sinclair was a symbol of the change threatening to displace the moguls from
their privileged social positions, and to upend old ways of doing business on the strength
of a mass mobilization. The weak campaign of Frank Merriam, Sinclair’s Republican
opponent, further goaded the industry leaders into action.
290

The moguls coordinated a vast and effective campaign against Sinclair, which
marked the entry of Hollywood as Hollywood—proprietors of a new and powerful
cultural form—into electoral politics.
291
Their red-baiting claims that Sinclair was “a
most dangerous Bolshevik bear” seeking to “Russianize” California were neither novel

289
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 41.
290
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 90-91. Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 41.
291
This was not “birth of media politics” as Greg Mitchell has claimed. Mitchell, The Campaign of the
Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics (New York:
Random House, 1992). See Ross, Hollywood Left and Right, for a thorough account of the evolution of
media politics.
165
nor surprising.
292
The new, powerful wrinkle were studio-produced newsreels, distributed
around the state, which depicted interviews with Californians supposedly chosen at
random. Those actors who voiced support for Merriam were depicted as relatable, decent
citizens: grandmas, service station attendants, business executives, housewives. In
striking contrast, all the Sinclair supporters were threats and parasites to the body politic:
tramps and hobos, foreigners speaking with thick accents, and vagrants pouring into
California in packed boxcars seeking to luxuriate in Sinclair’s socialized economy. MGM
and Fox’s California Election News shorts adopted the documentary style favored by
those on the left, examining timely issues and referencing the “the people.”
293
The clips
subverted progressive interpretations of “the people” by visually dividing the population
into respectable middle-classes who were the repositories of the people’s virtue against
the unworthy others.
294
All of these actions provoked disgust on the part of many left-
leaning studio employees.
295

But progressive organizing mushroomed in scale only when producers demanded
that studio employees making more than ninety dollar a week contribute one day’s salary
to the anti-Sinclair campaign. Even conservative and moderate studio workers were

292
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 91.
293
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 44.
294
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 42. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 91.
Actually, what’s it’s doing is conceptualizing virtuous people and unworthy people – so removing power of
the people concept by showing class(econ-moral) divide among the people). (The L.A. Times and Hearst
Examiner building on these productions from MGM and Fox, to run their own series conveying similar
themes
295
For a detailed account of this episode, see Ross, Hollywood Left and Right, 71-77.
166
furious. They resented the moguls’ paternalism and attempt to impose their decisions on
matters that were completely irrelevant to the process of creating and selling movies.
296

Those further to the left organized in response. Jean Harlow and James Cagney led an
actors’ rebellion against the political edict. Liberal writer Philip Dunne, a major voice of
discontent, wrote: “This aroused a lot of feeling, especially when the studios put the bite
on their employees to support the Republican.”
297
Screenwriters, led by Francis Scully,
an intellectual New Yorker, flowed into the Authors’ League for Sinclair, including
notables such as Lillian Hellman, Park, Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, and Donald
Ogden Stewart.
298
(It is suggestive that screenwriters and actors joined the Authors’
League, as they had no specifically film group to join.)
The Sinclair campaign was the formative crucible of progressive electoral
activism in the Hollywood-center of entertainment industry, as in the rest of California.
In Carey McWilliams words, the campaign comprised “one of the most successful
experiments in mass education ever performed” in the U.S. Coupled with the struggles of
the Writers and Actors Guilds against studio management, the workers of the
entertainment industry gained an understanding of the formidable political and economic
power arrayed against their aspirations in the public arena and the workplace alike. They
began to make connections between their professional lives and broader social issues.
299

296
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 92; Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 42.
297
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 42.
298
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 44.
299
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 93.
167
The impudence and overreach of the studio heads pushed culture workers toward
collective action on their own terms.
300

Antifascist Discourses and Institutions
While the Sinclair campaign demonstrably gave birth to the modern, liberal
Democratic Party in California on the terrain of class struggle, Hollywood activism and
the cosmopolitan branch of progressive activism most closely aligned with it, had anti-
fascism as its core principle and unifying slogan.
301
As historian Daniel Geary has
observed, during the 1930s and 1940s, anti-fascism was extremely prevalent throughout
the discourse of California progressive politics, most prominently in Carey McWilliams’
work. Anti-fascism predated the formal Popular Front policy of the Communist Party,
meshed well with that policy during the late 1930s, and persisted in its own right after
both the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the early years of McCarthyism.
Antifascism was a unifying thread, in part, because it linked the rising tide of
fascist dictatorships in Europe to the proliferation of reactionary movements in the U.S. It
provided a capacious framework to describe and denounce a wide variety of phenomena:
“union busting, anti-Semitism, nativism, militarism, capitalist exploitation, scapegoating,
lynching, red-baiting, and vigilante justice.” And as Geary writes, it had particularly deep

300
Ibid., 100.
301
The cosmopolitan branch was multiracial in character, drawing from all ethnic communities--Anglo,
Jewish, Black, Mexican, Asian, and European émigrés—and anchored in institutions such as the ACLU
and CIO. The other branch was heavily Anglo and populist in character, including the Townsend, Ham and
Eggs, Technocracy, Utopian Society – movements. Sinclair and Anglo socialists as were a transitional,
mediating force. This assessment of the two branches of Southern California progressive politics derives
from extensive reading in the historical literature and archival research.
168
roots in the California landscape: the long history of violent repression of dissent; the
obvious extent to which class stratification was intertwined with the subordination and
segregation of multiple “non-white” racial groups; the mass, industrial scale of
production in agriculture, entertainment, and newspapers; the presence of fierce white
supremacism and the lack—at least initially—of a vibrant egalitarian counter-movement;
Indeed, these characteristics were, in fact, all of a piece in California society.
302
All these
qualities marked off the local situation from the state of affairs in other places with longer
histories of progressive activism, with simpler matrices of race and class. Anti-fascism
also gained salience because in progressives’ view of the rest of the U.S., the
demagoguery of Father Coughlin and Huey Long, the militancy of the Klu Klux Klan,
and the economic royalism of the American Liberty League all seemed to bear
uncomfortable resemblances to the ominous regimes coming to power throughout
Europe. Last, but not least the swelling tide of refugees from European fascist regimes
reinforced and further developed the anti-fascist perspective and movement.
It is not surprising, then, that the two largest political organizations ever to
develop in Hollywood were explicitly anti-fascist mobilizations. Anti-fascist discourses
and institutions were critical to the entertainment industry’s engagement in politics and
paved the way for more exclusively partisan organizations.

The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League

302
Daniel Geary, “Carey McWilliams and Antifascism, 1934–1943,” Journal of American History 90, no. 3
(December 2003): 912–934.
169
The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL) was the signature institution for
Popular Front-era politics radiating out Southern California and its entertainment
industry. Nearly five thousand joined at its peak, but its influence was far greater.
303
The
HANL represented
a prototype of Popular Front groups in Hollywood – a small nucleus of
activist-celebrities launched the main effort which was then run on a day-
to-day basis by a salaried executive director, a small staff, and a host of
anonymous volunteers. The public image of the League was framed by the
Executive Board—usually a dozen or two leading lights, and included,
like the Board, many of the greatest names of the movie business. For
more perceptive readers of letterheads, what was especially impressive
about Popular Front organizations was the broad spectrum of political
opinion represented on the Board and the list of sponsors, from studio
moguls like Carl Laemmele, Jack Warner and Dore Schary to radical [i.e.
Communist] writers such as John Howard Lawson, and Sam Ornitz.
304

The HANL had extensive roots in the flight of refugees from Hitler’s Europe. It
began when German Communist Otto Katz arranged for German Catholic Prince
Hubertus zu Lowenstein to meet with such leading lights as Charlie Chaplin, Fritz Lang,
Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich, David Selznick, Ernst Lubitch, Norma Shearer, and Greta
Garbo. They decided to hold a large banquet, which raised a considerable amount of
money and brought in business leaders such as A. P. Giannini. Several months later, the
HANL publicly launched with a meeting at the Shrine Auditorium where ten thousand
people heard from prominent people in Hollywood, politics, and business.
305
In addition
to all the celebrities, many rank-and-file employees in the studios and concerned citizens

303
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 83.
304
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 104.
305
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 83; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 106 -7.
170
from across Los Angeles joined up. The only requirement for membership was
unquestionable anti-fascism; even some who were ultra-conservative in every other
respect joined in order to struggle against Hitler’s Nazism. With its anti-Hitler mission,
HANL enjoyed a great deal of support from L.A.’s Jewish population, including large
donations from various Hollywood producers.
306

The modality of its struggle closely tracked “the social rituals of the film colony.
Parties and social gatherings were central to its activities. In many cases, the organization
politicized the traditional hangouts of the Hollywood New Yorkers and the salons of the
refugees.”
307
There were cocktails at Stanley Rose’s bookstore and at Salka Viertel’s
home – fundraising events and screenings of films like The Spanish Earth.
The HANL held innumerable “meetings, demonstrations, speeches, banquets,
parties and panels focusing on every conceivable fascist menace to peace and freedom of
world.” In January 1937 alone, there were three big events: an interracial demonstration
against Nazism at the Philharmonic with W. E. B. Du Bois as main speaker; an
“educational” on Spanish Civil War at Shrine with speeches by Ernest Toller and Andre
Malraux and on KFWB, a broadcast featuring four luminaries. HANL organized protests
at the German consul, demonstrations against the American Nazi Party, and boycotts of
Japanese goods.
308
And whenever possible, HANL sought to hold events in public
spaces, so as to engage the wider populace. Donald Ogden Stewart, for instance, worked

306
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 83.
307
Ibid., 84.
308
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 108.
171
to make screenings of the Spanish Earth available to ordinary people at the Roosevelt
Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.
309

Spanish Civil War
Although Nazi Germany dominates the collective memory of mid-twentieth
century fascism, the Spanish Civil War, in its own time, 1936-1939, commanded the
attention of the world and galvanized progressives (with the exception of many
Catholics) like few international struggles ever had. The intervention of Hitler on the side
of Franco’s forces dramatized the threat Nazism posed beyond Germany and Central
Europe. The migration of progressives to the Loyalist armed forces and the stream of
news and images out of Spain heightened awareness of the international dimensions of
the progressive struggle. The war graphically illustrated the potential consequences of
right-wing power. As yet another outrage, the war broadened progressive thinking and
increased political involvement. Organizationally, the response in Hollywood was strong.
The Motion Picture Artists Committee to Aid Republican Spain (MPAC), which
supported the anti-fascist, pro-loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War, garnered nearly
15,000 members, a quarter of the total film community, including producers and studio
execs in addition to the usual rank-and-file suspects.
310

309
Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism, 82; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 109.
310
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 117.
172
The Extent and Nature of Popular Front Politics in Hollywood
Between 1932 and 1938, the film community in L.A had organized and mobilized
to an impressive extent. Most Hollywoodians did not participate, but by one estimate, a
remarkable 25% of the industry’s 50,000 - 60,000 employees belonged to the most
popular political organization of the era–the Motion Picture Artists Committee (MPAC),
which supported the anti-fascist, pro-loyalist side in the Spanish Civil War and whose
membership encompassed producers and studio executives in addition to the usual rank-
and-file suspects. At its peak, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL) garnered more
than 5,000 members. Beyond membership rolls, however, “The records show that, time
and again, that attendance at events, the enthusiasm produced, the information dispensed,
and the money raised occurred on a scale that both astonished contemporaries of all
political orientations.
311

The success of this organizing depended on a core group of 200 or so Hollywood
activists, and in particular on an inner circle of the fifty to seventy-five most committed
radical activists, evenly divided between those who followed the Communist Party line
(members and fellow travelers) and those who did not. (When the subpoenas came in
1947 and then 1951, they accurately targeted this core group of organizers.)
312
Without
this Hollywood-based nucleus of activism, the film community probably would still have
contributed financially to progressive Democratic causes, but it would have not generated
the powerful impact specific to its centrality in American culture.

311
Ibid., 125-26.
312
Ibid., 125-26.
173
Approximately three fifths of the key activists were screenwriters. In Ceplair and
Englund’s words,
Screenwriters were the elite corps of political consciousness in Hollywood
in the two decades after 1933 and their leaders were the brains of all the
organizations which sprang up in expression of this consciousness. Their
time, energy, and money fueled progressive politics in Hollywood and
their words advertised progressive ideals to the general public. Without
their unique contribution, Hollywood political activism might have
existed, of course, but only at the level of the cocktail party chic and
movie star glamour which were a part of its veneer.

Yet it should be noted that the seemingly superficial level of “cocktail party chic
and movie star glamour” was actually quite important. Actors, who composed
approximately a quarter of the activists, lent the considerable weight of their popularity
and appeal to the massive movie-watching public.
313
The fact that Hollywood was
“wealthy, ostentatious, glamorous” and led an existence at a far remove from most other
American communities was initially an advantage for progressive organizing. It had
considerable capacity for meaningful politicization, activism, consciousness, and national
efficacy. Progressives succeeded in politicizing formerly frivolous and oft-ridiculed
aspects of Hollywood culture. The cocktail party became “a locus of genuine exchange
and expansion.” Glamour became an “engine ensuring attention to important issues.”
Oppressive writers buildings became fertile meeting grounds for planning, persuasion,
and enlistment.
Donald Ogden Stewart, an Eastern blueblood screenwriter turned Communist,
exemplifies how the new political activity “fitted and helped transform the contours of

313
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 126; also see, Ross, Hollywood Left and Right.
174
the motion picture political scene.” Active in progressive organizations from the HANL
onward,” he intuitively understood how to convert Hollywood’s social patterns and the
studio system into functioning, energetic mechanism and consciousness-raising.”
314

The Establishment of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee
When “EPIC-liberal” Democrat Culbert Olson ran for Governor of California in
1938, Hollywood’s vibrant scene of Popular Front activism emerged as a ready source of
support. In March 1938, the Motion Picture Democratic Committee (MPDC) coalesced to
aid the campaign. The MPDC was the Hollywood version of similar left-liberal mass
electoral organizations that sprung up across the country at the intersection of growing
anti-fascism, the energized labor movement, FDR’s turn toward economic militancy, and
the Communist Party’s newfound “Popular Front” willingness to work across sectarian
lines. In 1936, the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations had helped initiate
Labor’s Non-Partisan League, which was national in scope and sought organize for pro-
labor candidates in local districts and states across the country. In California, successor
organizations to the EPIC campaign such the California People’s Legislative Conference
lived on as well.
315

The MPDC differed from most mass organizations of the era, however, because in
addition to “community” organizing in specific groups based on face-to-face connections,
it sought to organize “society” through mass cultural productions and through using the

314
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 127.
315
Ibid., 118.
175
power of celebrity to raise funds and draw attention to specific political claims. It was the
first such organization in the U.S. to do so in the service of progressive politics. When the
studio moguls had pioneered a similar strategy in 1934 on behalf of a conservative
Republican agenda, they taught progressives that “local and state politics had a direct
impact upon everyone’s immediate self-interest, and that there existed strong connections
between the progress of labor unions and elsewhere and the progress of liberal, New Deal
politics.”
316

The MPDC was also different in its semantic affinity, if not a formal
organizational affiliation, with the Democratic Party. Across the country, state and local
Democratic parties were rarely progressive. When organized in a mass basis, as in “urban
machines” such as New York’s “Tammany Hall,” their orientation was toward patronage
rather than progressive vision of societal transformation. And although FDR had
mastered the radio and the moguls had mobilized the power of moving images, the many
state and local affiliates of the Democratic Party did not fully appreciate the potential of
the celebrity and cultural forms stemming from the newly audible film industry.
The MPDC entered a California political scene defined by Upton Sinclair’s 1934
gubernatorial campaign. On one hand, it had created a large popular base for the
Democratic Party and pushed it strongly in progressive directions. Olson, for instance,
had gained election to the State Senate as L.A. County’s sole representative in 1934
running on Sinclair’s EPIC ticket. Once in office, he had been the leader of the new
“EPIC-liberal bloc” which was strongest in the State Assembly. Not as colorful as

316
Ibid., 118..
176
Sinclair, nor as given to dramatic pronouncements full of rhetorical flair, Olson’s 1938
platform of “A New Deal for California” nonetheless harkened back to Sinclair’s reform
“socialism”: “public ownership of private utilities, reorientation of the tax structure,
repeal of infringements upon civil liberties, production-for-use, increased social welfare
activities, and improvement of the conditions of migratory laborers.”
317

On the other hand, despite ushering a wave of “EPIC-liberal” candidates into
office, Sinclair’s campaign had not created durable, well-functioning institutions at the
center of the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was fundamentally disorganized
and fragmented in the 1930s. The MPDC thus developed in the context of an articulated
need for an institution to connect progressive Democratic electoral candidates with a
largely un-organized populace.
California’s political climate in 1938 was also more hospitable for New Deal-
aligned candidate than in most of the U.S. Elsewhere, conservative reaction to the New
Deal was swelling, for reasons ranging from the 1937 “Roosevelt Recession” to FDR’s
court-packing plan to the unrest generated by the labor’s uprising. But in California, the
New Deal had never really arrived. The momentum of insurgency remained with
progressive Democrats and it seemed clear that they commanded a large enough share of
the popular support to ensure success. There was a critical caveat: millions of people had
to be organized and mobilized to vote, against the formidable counter-efforts of the well-
oiled Republican party and allied business owners from media moguls such as Hearst,

317
Ibid., 119.
177
Chandler and Knowland to the studio executives, agricultural tycoons, and mining
interests.
Screenwriters served as the guiding force of the MPDC. Dashiell Hammet was
chairman. Philip Dunne served as vice-chairman; Dudley Nichols was financial director,
while John Bright worked as publicity director. The Board included Donald Ogden
Stewart, Ralph Block, Milt Gross, John Grey, Jo Swerling, Allen Rivkin, Harold
Buchman, Martin Berkeley, Robert Tasker, Nat Perrin, Gordon Rigby, and Shepard
Traube. However, the involvement of other film professionals was absolutely critical to
the organization’s success. Actors, publicists, electricians and other studio workers all
participated, lending their unique skills and endowments, to both creative collaborations
and endeavors especially tailored to their strengths.
Philip Dunne shared the mantle of non-Communist progressive leadership with
actor Melvyn Douglas, who was most identifiable member of the MPDC, a talented
speaker, and a masterful organizer. Douglas drew sizable crowds as he barnstormed
around the state and brought many of Hollywood’s leading figures, such as Dunne,
Gloria Stuart, Miriam Hopkins, and Dashiell Hammet into the organization, and appealed
to the rank-and-file. His efforts garnered him the position of Olson’s Southern California
campaign chairman.
318

In the week leading up to the election, over 500,000 voters viewed a film,
California Speaks, which MPDC had produced. In addition, the organization sponsored
four statewide and two nationwide radio broadcasts on behalf of Olson and the new Deal.

318
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 62.
178
Actors toured California and gave speeches crafted by the writers. Backlot workers and
young writers politicked indefatigably through the local precincts. Large sums of money
were raised along the customary cocktail party circuit and through appeals at mass
meetings headlined by Hollywood’s leading lights.
319
As Ronald Brownstein writes, this
Popular Front activism was “unsurpassed tutor” in “political tactics”: “its leaders
understood intuitively that in a modern media society, celebrities were most useful as
beacons to illuminate a political agenda for the public, not as prizes to dangle privately
before politicians.”
320

After Olson’s victory in November 1938, however, the Committee grew
complacent and ceased to function. They snapped back to attention when Republicans
and conservative Democrats in the legislature launched stinging assaults on Olson’s
budget and social policies as soon as he took office. In Ceplair and Englund’s words,
“The hundreds who had sat back now realized they must function as a pressure threat as
well—not periodically, but incessantly.” On February 12, 1939, the MPDC issued a
“Declaration of Policy” and formalized its existence.

The Motion Picture Democratic Committee as an Institution
The Motion Picture Democratic Committee’s success, before and after Olson’s
election depended on gainfully employed, and often leading Hollywood figures choosing
to labor mightily during their “off-the-clock” hours. “I worked all day in the studio and

319
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 119.
320
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 61.
179
all night in the political movement. And then I’d take nap in the afternoon and refreshed,
rise and got at it again,” Dunne reminisced.
321
With paid staff minimal to non-existent,
those volunteer leaders who were willing to take on day-to-day work played an outsize
role in steering its actions. This situation mattered because members of the enlarged,
ecumenical Popular Front-era Communist Party ready to shoulder the load, in numbers to
disproportionate to their standing in MPDC’s general membership.
Over domestic policy there was no particular clash between the much moderated,
Popular Front period (1935-1939) views of the Communist Party and those of non-
Communist progressives. Most grassroots progressives, especially the newcomers to
politics commonplace in Hollywood, saw little breach. Among such non-Communist
progressive leaders as Dunne and Douglas, however, there was more anxiety over the
place of Communists in progressive organizing. Douglas, in particular, had significant
connections within the New Deal administration and a strategic matter, he envisioned
MPDC “working within the Dem Party to support and extend the New Deal nationally
and, primarily, to bring a New Deal to California”
322
His DC connections made him
aware of the high political costs associated with the involvement of “Reds.” Despite the
yeoman’s work done by members of the Communist Party, Douglas and other
progressive anti-Communists were frustrated by the substance of Communists’
commitments to the Soviet Union and by what they saw as unfair and ill-directed
factional maneuvering within organizations like the MPDC. Given Communists’

321
Ibid., 63.
322
Ibid., The Power and the Glitter, 62.
180
significant membership numbers in Hollywood and their organizing prowess, the
progressive anti-Communist leadership unenthusiastically acquiesced to their
participation on the condition that the MPDC remain devoted to principles and policies
upon which all could agree.
Because of progressive unity, the MPDC was able to boldly oppose the rising
conservative reaction. Its actions followed the distinctive path of mass cultural organizing
that it had pioneered in the 1938 campaign. MPDC created committees focused on radio,
motion picture, publications, and speakers committees, each to communicate the group’s
message in a different medium.
323
They closely coordinated with representatives of the
Olson and Roosevelt administrations to advance a common, social democratic agenda. In
September 1939, the board heard from Ernest Culligan, assistant to the administrator of
the National Housing Authority who asked for the MPDC’s assistance with the “expert
dramatization of the housing problem.” He guaranteed access to national radio-time and
the participation of leading New Dealers such as President Roosevelt and Housing
Administrator Nathan Straus to appear. The Board replied favorably, assuring their
ability to make screen celebrities available for joint appearances and empowering
Richard Weil to further discuss radio programs with the Culligan.
324
In October, the
Board discussed aiding the California State Relief agency with a film on full and fair

323
Minutes of Administrative Board Meeting of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, 28 August
1939, Box 15, Folder 3, Melvyn Douglas Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.
324
Minutes of Motion Picture Democratic Committee Executive Board Meeting, 24 September 1939, Box
15, Folder 3, Douglas Papers, p. 1.
181
employment. Dunne and Maurice Murphy agreed to work on it with Robert Murphy, the
CA State Relief Administration’s public relations official.
325

Less than a year after its creation, the MPDC had begun to develop a markedly
metropolitan vision and political base that foreshadowed the configuration that emerged
fully under the Hollywood Democratic Committee of the mid 1940s. In December 1939,
the Board took a position against the Municipal Bus System measure on the L.A. City
ballot because a “transportation system restricted solely to motor buses would be
inadequate for this city” and the ordinance would facilitate this situation and “autocratic
control by commissioners.” It supported a bond issue to fund the Los Angeles Airport to
realize the promise upon which considerable funds had already been invested.
326

Earlier that year, the organization had begun to investigate how to assert its
influence through lobbying on legislation. The leadership began to keep careful track of
social policy bills pending in Congress and the California legislature. Maurice Murphy
outlined a course of action in L.A. City politics, involvement with the councilmanic
campaigns, cooperation with Clifford Clinton in regard to mayoral politics in the interest
of “progressive unity,” and attempts to have “stars write fan letters to voters for local
distribution.” As part of MPDC’s efforts to build its influence, Melvyn Douglas
embarked on a program of inviting “political figures in and out office to his house the last

325
Minutes of Motion Picture Democratic Committee Executive Board Meeting, 24 October 1939, Box 15,
Folder 3, Douglas Papers, p. 1.
326
Minutes of Motion Picture Democratic Committee Executive Board Meeting, 5 December 1939, Box
15, Folder 3, Douglas Papers, p. 1.
182
Saturday” of every month.
327
In December, the MPDC planned to attend the invitation-
only first meeting of “Grass Roots Conference for California,” initiated by the local
Labor’s Non-Partisan League.
The organization had ambitious plans for long-term growth and expansion. In the
summer of 1939, the leadership discussed plans to start a New York branch of the
MPDC, as suggested by board member Everett Weil. Progressive Democratic forces
nation-wide could desperately use the powerful mass cultural tactics the MPDC had
pioneered in California. The Board agreed to began exploring the concept.
328
In the fall,
Vic Shapiro outlined a plan for long-term fundraising, including annual gridiron dinners,
Star-Spangled Banner Award Banquets, and New Year Eve Parties.
329

The Declaration of Policy
The MPDC’s Declaration of Policy exemplified the anti-fascist posture, melding
patriotic radicalism with a political analysis that depicted an all-encompassing struggle
between democracy “on the defensive” and the “new feudalism, which we call Fascism.”
Committee members agreed on the first three planks of their pledge: to 1) “complete faith
in the democratic process” 2) “Strive as Americans for the defense, deepening, and

327
Minutes of Motion Picture Democratic Committee Executive Board Meeting, 11 April 1939, Box 15,
Folder 3, Douglas Papers, pp. 1-2.
328
Minutes of Administrative Board Meeting, 28 August 1939, Box 15, Folder 3, Douglas Papers.
329
Minutes of Motion Picture Democratic Committee Executive Board Meeting, 24 October 1939, Box 15,
Folder 3, Douglas Papers, p. 1; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 122-23.
183
strengthening of democracy and all that implies” and “Fight for the preservation of those
individual liberties guaranteed to all Americans under the Bill of Rights.”
330

The fourth and final provision was far more controversial. Philip Dunne, a leading
non-Communist, labored mightily and ultimately with success to include a pledge of
“Categorical opposition to any and all forms of minority dictatorship, whatever the
economic philosophy behind them.” The Communists and their allies on the board
accurately felt that Dunne was attempting to distance the MPDC from the Soviet Union.
Dunne was worried that the organization was losing credibility because of chatter about
its connections with the Communist Party, just as the news of the Moscow Purge trials
further tarnished the reputation of Communism, especially within the Popular Front left.
The compromise was to include the word “minority.” Communists could publicly accept
the phrasing “minority dictatorship” because in its vagueness and ambiguity, seemed to
leave open the possibility that a dictatorship theoretically acting on behalf of and
responsible to the majority was acceptable.
331

Like so many battles between Communists and non-Communists, this was almost
entirely about foreign policy and specifically, their respective appraisal of the Soviet
Union—vehicle for progressive change or abomination on par with right-wing
dictatorships. As it concerned domestic matters, there was little substantive disagreement
about principles and policies between non-Communists and Communists. But liberals
had not become Communists. Rather the Communist base, and at this time, the leadership

330
Ibid.
331
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 120.
184
as well, shared the patriotic and democratic consensus that stretched across almost the
entire political spectrum. They identified strongly as Americans, not just by virtue of
their residence in the country but also by embracing the culture of Americanism. They
were deeply loyal to the American democratic tradition and believed in its possibilities.
The notions of “liberty” enshrined in the founding documents of the U.S. sat comfortably
in their minds.
332

Indeed, the struggle over opposition to dictatorship disguised weaknesses in their
specific narrative of radical Americanism, which stemmed from older republican,
populist, and progressive discourses, but blossomed during the years of the Popular
Front. Whereas influential early twentieth century Progressive historian Charles Beard
had simplified the creation of the Constitution into a battle between the great majority of
people and the propertied interests, Popular Front-era progressives lionized, in their
words, “the first great Americans [who] conceived and put into operation a new form of
government, based on the radical proposition that all men, are created free and equal,
dedicated to the revolutionary principle of government by the people, of the people, and
for the people.” They drew an unbroken line from the founding generation to the
American people who overturned slavery during the Civil War to their own time, when
they claimed that “Today, in Washington, another great American, the President of the
United States, is fighting a courageous and tireless battle in defense of those same
cherished ideals.” And they placed the United States as the dominant progressive force

332
Ibid.
185
for change in the entire world: “America, now as in 1776, now as in 1863, is the hope of
civilization.”
333

It almost goes without saying that this rhetorical strategy was quite useful in
attempting to consolidate progressive goals and activism as legitimately American. But in
claiming that the very embodiment of what America meant was progressive and what
was progressive was quintessentially American, the activists overreached.
334
By
glorifying the virtue of the American people and the current President, they gave
themselves little space to understand the distinctly un-progressive actions of the
President, much less those of the American people and the U.S. in the world. One aspect
of this weakness was largely internal. To the extent that progressive believed in the frame
(as opposed to articulating it cynically for strategic purposes) it could blind them to the
possibility of the American people and the Democratic President acting in unjust,
inequitable ways, leading them to both over-confidence in the strength of their struggle
and an inability to reason through divisions in the progressive coalition. A paranoid,
conspiratorial mode of thinking was especially dangerous when the political situation
turned against then, as it would, especially during the early years of the Cold War
At the moment of their greatest strength, progressives reinforced the power of
nationalism, in general, and of American exceptionalism, in particular. The alternative
would have been to represent the American nation and progressive politics as overlapping

333
Resolution of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, [undated], Box 15, Folder 3, Douglas Papers.
334
A detailed analysis of what was said in all those meetings of the MPDC and the 1938 campaign is absent
because those records no longer exist. The minutes that still exist contained minimal discussion of policy
and extensive indications of who spoke.
186
but not co-extensive spheres. The U.S. and many of its people and leaders had been a
force for progress, at times. On many other occasions, however, progressivism and
Americanism were opposed. Americans and the U.S. had not and did not always act in
keeping with the values of the Popular Front progressives. And there were many other
sources of progressive action aside from the people, leaders, and government of the U.S.
Recognizing this situation could have led Popular Front progressives to articulate a more
flexible way of thinking about the relationship between progressive politics and the
American nation. A grounded, hybrid multi-national framework for progressive politics,
rather than an anti-national or nationalist one could have been the way forward. A more
robust framework might have recognized the contingent, complicated, contradictory
character of American progressive leadership—FDR in particular, as a potential partner
for achieving victories in a variety of particular, although often linked struggles for social
justice, not as a clear-cut friend or enemy, ally or adversary.
The shattering impact of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939 and of the more enduring
Cold War divisions of the late 1940 both gained strength from this all-or-nothing
approach to the intersection of progressive politics and the American nation. Whether
progressives chose to support U.S. or Soviet policy, their framing of the issue assumed
the need to chose the single right course of action. Nations were linked to progress or
reaction. There could be little space for a more nuanced view. Given the previous
consensus on American democracy, nascent anti-Communist progressives could be
forgiven for their shock at those Communist-aligned progressives who ferociously turned
against the benevolence of the American people and their political leadership. The
187
accuracy of Communist-aligned critiques mattered little given their rapid about-face from
equating Americanism with progress to equating it with reaction. And the Communist-
aligned progressives shared responsibility for obscuring the unprogressive tendencies of
the American people, and U.S. foreign and domestic policy, thus rendering progressives
in general less likely to be open to legitimate critiques of it.
This all-or-nothing frame of mind led also many progressives to see reactionary
tendencies as a function of “corruption”—whether that meant upper class dominance,
foreign interference, or rising fascism. It also led the more “left” Soviet-sympathetic
progressives to overestimate both the irretrievability of the Democratic Party and their
ability to attract the support of “the people” with a new Progressive Party, while it led
more anti-communist progressives to overconfidence in the inherently progressive
direction of American history, including the character of its people. Overall, the structure
of their thinking rendered their critiques less credible with wider publics and weakened
their own ability to reason strategically.
Popular Front-era progressive rhetoric of this sort only intensified after the U.S.
entered World War II. At the initial meeting of the Hollywood Democratic Committee in
1943, the 200 assembled people heard the chairman proclaim the importance of the new
organization’s “chance to do some of the fighting in out country’s war for survival.”
Another asserted “We vote for and support any candidate who is really democratic and
whole-heartedly wants to win this greatest of all democratic wars… In short, the only
kind of representative we will stand for is a patriotic American.”
335
Loyalty to the nation

335
Hollywood Democratic Committee History Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p.2.
188
was rendered equivalent to the greatest struggle for progress, with no reservations,
equivocations, or sense of contingency and contradiction. Their Americanism went so far
as to compel them to ask labor union political action groups to change the wording of
their materials from “Labor” to “Citizens” whenever possible.
336

After the Pact
The Motion Picture Democratic Committee ran aground on the shoals of the Nazi-
Soviet Pact, which exposed the contradictory foundations of American nationalism and
Soviet Communism that undergirded 1930s progressive politics. After Soviet-
sympathetic progressives maneuvered into control after Pact and ran Lieutenant Governor
Ellis Patterson against FDR-aligned incumbent Governor Culbert Olson, it slid into
marginality, incapable of dramatic action, and soon expired. Despite the breach of
Popular Front accord, attempts among non-Communist progressives to organize on a
mass basis continued after 1939 and with even more intensity and seeming unity from
late 1941 through 1948.
Left-liberals not aligned with the Communist Party created a Hollywood for
Roosevelt committee in the 1940 election. Led by Melvyn Douglas, active participants
included Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Edward G Robinson, Joan Bennett, Alice Faye, Henry
Fonda, and Rosalind Russell. It was the first organization in the mass entertainment
industry that had direct ties to the national Democratic Party and very close ones, to boot.
The Democratic National Committee actually helped to fund the Committee’s extensive

336
Minutes of the Executive Board, 19 March 1943, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
189
efforts.
337
Melvyn Douglas was the key link. During a visit to DC in 1939, he had me
with many important New Deal leaders and reported to his colleagues at the pre-Pact
MPDC, “I am convinced…. there is little doubt in any quarter as to our possible value… I
talked to most of the Washington ‘glamour boys and girls’ and I have their assurances of
real cooperation.”
338

Ceplair and Englund are partly correct when they highlight the non-Communist
progressives’ turn away from the mass mobilization strategies of the Popular Front in
such organizations as the California Citizens Council, William Allen White’s Committee
to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, the Union for Democratic Action (the
forerunner of the American for Democratic Action), and Fight for Freedom and toward
forms of “elite influencing” such as lobbying and punditry. But the broad-based tactics of
non-Communist Hollywood progressives in the 1940 election suggest that this turn was
far from unanimous.
The Committee wove the power of celebrity across the various media of the era.
Major actors and actress wrote endorsement letters, which the DNC paid to have
reprinted in large newspapers across the country. Melvyn Douglas’s October 1940 tour of
the country consistently garnered to considerable attendance and streams of newspaper
coverage. The Committee and the DNC sent a host of Hollywood’s luminaries across the
country, where they broadcast appeals for the Democratic slate across the airwaves.
Celebrity attracted far larger audiences than an ordinary political program would and

337
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 75.
338
Quoted in Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 79.
190
radio allowed those celebrities to reach simultaneously far more people than any other
medium. In the week before the election, the DNC bought radio time for two nation-wide
broadcasts featuring such stars as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bogart, Melvyn Douglas, Henry
Fonda, Groucho Marx, Lucille Ball, Joan Bennet and John Garfield.
339

It is evident, then, that the 1940 presidential election was a significant turning
point in the relationship between mass culture organizing and the political party
structures. In the words of Ronald Brownstein,

There was no single guiding intelligence (certainly not FDR himself), nor
any coordinated plan. But the expanding aura of celebrity illuminating
Hollywood virtually forced closer relations with Washington. The stars
were a unique resource in a mass media era: they were not only creatures
of mass communication—raised to their exalted status by the enormous
attention the new communications technologies made possible—but also
tools of mass communication, vehicles, for projecting fashions, values,
and political messages.

Hollywood was just too large a part of American culture and society to ignore. By 1940,
the size of the press corps covering Hollywood was smaller only than those concentrating
on Washington, DC and New York City.
340

More than ever before, Republicans and Democrats alike made a concerted effort
to recruit actors, directors and writers to support their campaigns.
341
And the national
Democratic Party, with Roosevelt leading the way, realized the ability of Hollywood’s
celebrity appeal to attract political support. Roosevelt was familiar with the key new

339
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 79-80.
340
Ibid., 75.
341
Ibid., 80.
191
medium. He took pleasure in watching movies and socializing with film personalities. In
the 1920s, he had even written a screenplay of his own. But his familiarity translated into
a skillful exploitation of the industry’s political potential, rather than any sort of
sycophancy or awe.
342
Inadvertently, Communists’ post-Pact strategic choices had
pushed left-liberals to work directly under the leadership of the national Democratic Party
leadership, rather than as independent forces outside or even within the Democratic Party.
It would not be the last time.

342
Ibid., 76.
192
CHAPTER FOUR
THE HOLLYWOOD DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE AND THE CHALLENGE
OF SCALE, 1942-1947

This chapter tells the story of the preeminent liberal electioneering and lobbying
organization that emerged at the intersection of Hollywood’s “Cultural Front” and the
Democratic Party—the Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC) and its successor—the
Hollywood branch of the Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences and
Professions (HICCASP). The HDC and the merged organization, the ICCASP, with its
chapters in major cities across the country, I argue, have not been sufficiently appreciated
in the context of building a progressive, mass political organization. Glancing mentions,
to be sure, are rife in the literature on Hollywood and New Deal politics during this
period. But ICCASP, I argue, represented the most organized, effective concentration of
celebrities and mass culture workers in progressive electoral politics to date and perhaps
since.
The Hollywood Democratic Committee was the mass cultural equivalent of the
series of national citizens committees chronicled in the previous chapters. Where those
organizations concentrated on face-to-face “community” organizing, the HDC sought to
mobilize the new “mass society” through methods associated with its paradigmatic
medium. Its achievements in this national arena as well as across metropolitan Los
Angeles were remarkably broad and deep. Its work showed what was possible in a Janus-
faced period, looking back to the New Deal and anticipating the progressive politics that
would accompany the major shifts in American society toward international political-
193
economic preeminence and toward a suburban, TV-centered lifestyle and landscape. For
this reason, its history illuminates what was lost in the epochal shifts of the late 1940s
and early 1950s.
Equally important, the circumstances of its birth—at the conjunction of a
Hollywood community increasingly inclined toward left-liberalism and a Southern
California partisan landscape in which the Democratic Party had rapidly become the
obvious, uncontested vehicle for left-liberal electoral politics—provides an important
point of reference to contrast and compare with the various national citizens committees
which first emerged in other places and under different circumstances. Despite the clear
ideological affinity with the local Democratic Party, an aversion to partisanship led to an
ambivalent, half-hearted embrace of the Democratic Party, which limited both the
Hollywood committee’s independence and their influence within the Democratic Party.
Likewise, persistent tensions and disputes over which scale—local, state, or national—
the organizations should emphasize in their drive to realize their ambitious vision,
undermined a focused, coherent approach to building power and creating durable
achievements. Before an eventual merger, the Hollywood Democratic Committee, only
haltingly paired up with its New York-based counterpart, the Independent Citizens
Committee of Arts, Sciences and Professions. And relations with the local branch of
NCPAC—much of which concerned the division of labor on local, state, and federal
issues—were especially difficult.
Although the successor to the HDC, like its predecessor MPDC was eventually
torn apart by the issue of Communism, for the most of its history, the bulk of the
194
organization’s strategic, tactical, and institutional debates did not break along predictable
Communist / non-Communist lines, much less “left” versus “liberal.” The major month-
to-month challenges weren’t ideologically charged in a deep way, much less along grand
geopolitical and philosophical fault lines. Dispositions and the circumstances of
particular situations seemed to matter much more. The major tropes of American political
culture and the particularities of the fragmented U.S polity informed political activists
across the putative “left” and “liberal” lines that are so commonly assumed to matter
most. The records of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, in particular, offer a
remarkable window into the culture of Popular Front-era liberalism, from the use of
culture in electoral politics and media campaigns to an evolving perspective on the key
issues of race, nation, and the geopolitics from World War II through the beginning of the
Cold War.
This chapter departs from much of the scholarship on the Culture Front and on
progressive Hollywood organizations such as the Hollywood Democratic Committee by
refusing to make the splits over Communism into the central arc of the narrative, both
chronologically and as the main dividing line within the progressive Hollywood
community. The chapter steps away from the intense preoccupation with the eventuality
of the blacklist and allegations of complicity and duplicity amid McCarthyism. Instead of
emphasizing grand ideological struggles, this chapter focuses on the institutional
development of progressive electoral groups in Hollywood and especially on the
challenges they encountered within the American polity—the fragmentation of political
power across the local, state and federal levels of government, the vexed institution of the
195
Democratic Party, the fraught notion of “the people” and the question of how to scale up
and build out.
343
Nonetheless, this chapter forthrightly acknowledges the geopolitical
contradictions that undermined the structure of progressive unity, culminating in the
fissures of the Cold War, and it highlights local contingencies, especially the tension
between official Communist directives for separatism and the efforts of local
Communists to preserve good working relationships with fellow progressives.

The Establishment of the Hollywood Democratic Committee
The Hollywood Democratic Committee sprouted out of the field first plowed by
the Motion Picture Democratic Committee. As a result of the rupture occasioned by the
Nazi-Soviet Pact, there was no long-standing organization working to leverage
Hollywood’s cultural powers in electoral politics. Nonetheless, several years of intense
political organizing meant that many key players had become more skilled and political
consciousness in general had grown. In its time, the HDC would become “much more
impressive than the MPDC,” according to one of its staffers, Ellenore Bogigian

343
The existing literature is vast, see Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood:
Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960 (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980); Victor Navasky,
Naming Names (New York: Viking Press, 1980); Kenneth Billingsley, Hollywood Party: How Communism
Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s (Roseville, CA: Prima Publishing, 1998);
Kathryn Cramer Brownell, “The Entertainment Estate: Hollywood in American Politics, 1932-1972,”
(Ph.D. Diss., Boston University, 2011); Saverio Giovacchini, Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in
the Age of the New Deal (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001); Gerald Horne, Class Struggle in
Hollywood, 1930-1950: Moguls, Mobsters, Stars, Reds, and Trade Unionists (Austin: University of Texas
Press, 2001); Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2000); Lary May, Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the
Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) Giulana Muscio, Hollywood's New Deal
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997); Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over
Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance With the Left (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2005);
Steve J. Ross, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011); Sheila Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ War (New York: Knopf, 1982).
196
Abowitz.
344
After the 1942 election defeats, progressives decided to create a durable
vehicle that could carry on the struggle against fascism everywhere and for social
democracy in the United States.
The entrance of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. into World War II on the same side had
opened up a new space, albeit temporary for progressives, regardless of their relation to
Soviet Union, to unite their efforts. The embrace was much more intense the second time
around, but also far more superficial—those not oriented toward the Communist Party
remained deeply suspicious and even bitter about the “betrayal” of the Nazi-Soviet
Pact.
345
The contradictions underpinning progressive unity would become painfully
apparent soon after the end of the war. In the meantime, however, liberal political
organization and mobilization flourished as never before.
346

The Hollywood Democratic Committee (HDC) originated amidst the 1942
election campaign. Many Hollywood progressives were growing anxious about the
reactionary currents stirred up by the fever of war. A group including composer Johnny
Green and Communists John Howard Lawson, Dalton Trumbo, and Johnny Bright
organized to support Governor Olson’s re-election campaign and Will Rogers, Jr.’s
campaign for Congress.
347
Walter Huston, Nat Perrin, Harburg, Hector Chevigny,
Russell, James Cleason, Marc Connelly, Mary McCall Jr., Walter Abel and William

344
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 225.
345
Ibid., 186-88, 225.
346
Ronald Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter: The Hollywood-Washington Connection (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1990), 97.
347
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 225.
197
Morris were the nucleus of pro-Olson and Will Rogers effort.
348
Their efforts, although
energetic, came far too late to save Olson from losing to rising Republican star Earl
Warren. As Nat Perrin explained, “What struck me most vividly is that had we been in
this thing weeks earlier, it would have made a total difference. It disturbed me that we
had no organization.”
349

The Hollywood Democratic Committee formally began with a meeting in January
1943, attended by 180 people from the film community. Screenwriter Marc Connelly
chaired the meeting and offered a seal of approval from the Eastern cultural
establishment as befit a veteran of New York’s prestigious Algonquin Roundtable and a
“Connecticut type of gentile” at home in the Ivy League.
350
The other leaders included
newcomers to the Hollywood political scene and old hands from the MPDC, especially
the Communists, but not, notably, several of the New Deal-aligned non-Communists such
as Melvyn Douglas and Phillip Dunne.
351

Nonetheless, in the early years of the organization, non-Communists comprised
the majority of the board and held most of the officer positions. Connelly was chairman,
while Gene Kelly, E. Y. “Yip” Harburg and John Cromwell served as vice-chairmen.
Those more oriented toward Soviet leadership numbered eight: Cromwell, Henry
Blankfort, Sidney Buchman, Edward Dymtryk, John Howard Lawson, William

348
George Pepper to Mrs. Jay Gorner, 7 November 1943, Box 1, Folder 1, Hollywood Democratic
Committee Records, Wisconsin Historical Society. [Hereafter “HDC Records”]
349
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 81.
350
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 81.
351
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 225.
198
Pomerance, Robert Rossen, and Frank Tuttle; while those more attuned to New Deal
leadership numbered fourteen: the three leading officers, plus Olivia de Havilland, John
Garfield, Ira Gershwin, Sheridan Gibney, Johnny Green, Miriam Hopkins, Emmet
Lavery, Lewis Milestone, Edward G. Robinson, and Orson Welles. The Board set the
organization’s policy, in occasionally contentious debates, and pushed the HDC into new
realms of activity.
352

On a day-to-day basis, however, the leading force behind HDC’s rapid initial
phase of expansion was its Executive Director, George Pepper. As Englund and Ceplair
observe, all of the leading World War II-era Popular Front groups were held together by a
critical behind-the-scenes leader: Sidney Hillman of CIO-PAC, C. C. “Beanie” Baldwin
of NCPAC, and Hannah Dorner of ICCASP. The HDC was different only in that its
director was an open member of the Communist Party. After arthritis ended his music
career, Pepper had energetically organized fellow musicians for the war effort and
Hollywoodians for the 1942 elections. “Under his very able direction, the HDC grew
rapidly, and by mid-1943 it had become the major outpost of progressivism west of the
Hudson River. All who knew and worked beside Pepper attested to his intelligence,
discipline and uncanny knack for bring together people of diverse partisan viewpoints.”
As Abowitz put it, “He put together the HDC like a watch and polished it like an jewel.”

352
“Target for Today: The Bulletin of the HDC” endorsed candidates, recommended positions on state and
federal legislation in Sac and DC, especially regarding civil rights and racial injustices. The HDC also
jumpstarted the Council for Civic Unity.
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 228.
199
At the end of 1943, the HDC had more than one thousands members. By 1945, 2,700
belonged and in 1946, membership reached 3,200.
353

The HDC was a formidable organization that undertook far more extensive
outreach than its predecessors, the MPDC and Hollywood for Roosevelt Committee, even
as it drew on their methods and built on their accomplishments. Englund and Ceplair, in
their otherwise cogent analysis, erroneously contend that in the post-Pact environment,
“the politics of the Phony War era narrowed the purposes and issues around which leftists
and progressives could unify—to campaigns to Win the War and re-elect FR. As a result,
the Popular Front groups of the forties, especially the Hollywood Writers’ Mobilization
(HWM), lacked a potential for enduring.” While the Hollywood Writers’ Mobilization,
backed by 3,500 novelists, entertainment writers, publicists, journalists, cartoonists,
composers and lyricists may have narrowed its vision compared to the Hollywood Anti-
Nazi League, the evidence indicates that the independence, breadth, and critical scope of
Hollywood Democratic Committee’s vision matched and at times, exceeded the scope of
its late 1930s predecessors.
354

In reality, the reason the HDC lacked the potential to endure resided the shifting
plates of international geopolitics and the tangled webs of national and transnational
political allegiances. Non-Communists’ bitter memories of Communists’ apparent
perfidy and intellectual dishonesty after the Pact were the major backdrop to the HDC’s

353
Ibid., 227.
354
Ibid., 188.
200
eventual dissolution.
355
It is not too much to claim that the eventual rupture and decline of
the HDC and similar organizations was over-determined, even foreordained. And yet to
focus on this fact misses some of the most important aspects of Popular Front liberalism
and what this experience reveals about the deeper dilemma of how progressives could
and should develop institutions and build power in a fragmented American political
system, where there was no natural, all-encompassing home for their vision.

A Progressive Vision
Indeed, debates within the HDC’s leadership focused far more on the “how” of
creating political power in a fragmented political system than on which position to take
on a given legislative issue. Institutional questions—from relationships with the
Democratic Party and various progressive organizations to the optimal scale/scope of
action and eventually how to position the organization in relation to the geopolitical
polarization between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.—predominated.
The HDC shared a progressive vision and set of policy priorities with other
Popular Front-era liberal groups such as NCPAC and this consensus occasioned almost
no dissent internally. There were, however three areas, in which the HDC’s positioning
was distinctively important or significant for how it revealed broader features of Popular
Front liberalism. First, it was the great promise of the Cultural Front to expand the vision
of progressive politics beyond economic security alone to the flourishing of cultural and
artistic expression among ordinary people. Second, the HDC’s commitment to social

355
Ibid., 227.
201
equality across racial lines marked a change from the progressive groups of the 1930s,
but the legacy of earlier frames of reference—especially in regard to assumptions about
the inherent virtue of “the people”—remained influential. The group’s treatment of race,
racism, and anti-racism also reveals how it understood and positioned itself on a range of
other issues, from its implicit theory of social change and political process to its
perspective on America’s place in the world. Third, the Cultural Front opened up new
ways of conceptualizing the practice of politics and offered formidable resources from
technology and leaders of mass culture to everyday campaigns. “Politics as a creative
art,” could transform the terrain on which political campaigns were waged by inspiring a
vision of a society transformed and by deploying the leaders of the new mass society as
the greatest exponents of this vision and its political candidates.

A Social Democracy of Culture
The involvement of culture workers in practical politics played an important role
in broadening the aspirations of liberalism. In a 1944 campaign spot broadcast across the
nation’s radio waves, actor Edward G. Robinson articulated a social democratic vision
that moved beyond economic security alone, the right to a good job and the ability to
consume basic material necessities. Addressing workers as an equal—a fellow worker,
only in the “arts—motion pictures, specifically,” he exclaimed that his deep belief that
those “who work in labor and agriculture and business – in overalls or white collars –
202
deserve a life in which there is time for education and recreation. These are the dividends
of our democracy,” to consume and produce music, literature and performance.
356

Robinson and his fellow Cultural Front progressives consolidated, amplified, and
elaborated upon a longer tradition of what we might call “a social democracy of culture”
that prioritized sufficient leisure time and government support of popular cultural and
educational institutions. For a half-century prior, the labor movement had rallied around
the cry of “eight hours for what we will”—a shorter work schedule to enable time for
rest, relaxation and the cultivation of senses left un-stimulated by repetitive on-the-job
tasks. The social unionism of the mid twentieth century drew great strength from its
commitment to and provision of leisure activities for its members and the broader
working class community. In New York City, specifically, Josh Freeman has shown,
social democratic policies encompassed support for popular cultural and educational
institutions.
357
But Robinson’s words were distinctive because they were those of a major
mass cultural figure, speaking to a national audience in the midst of an electoral
campaign and yet still positioning himself as a worker. He was a worker—albeit in the
field of culture—who pressed for the right for all to enjoy the fruits and production
culture, in addition to enjoying those things in strictly economic and utilitarian fields. The
vision was not limited to new government policies alone, but encompassed an
understanding of a society transformed in a meaningful way.

356
Telegram, Alan Reitman of CIOPAC to Pepper, Box 2, Folder 8, Hollywood Democratic Committee
Records, Wisconsin Historical Society.
357
Roy Rosensweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920
(New York: Cambridge University Press 1985); Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and
Labor Since World War II (New York: The New Press, 2001).
203

The Challenge of Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism in the Era of the Popular Front
Aside from the split over the Cold War, no issue provides a better entré into the
tensions at the heart of Popular Front-era liberalism than the matter of race. The HDC’s
treatment of race is also especially illuminating of how it understood and positioned itself
on a range of other issues, from its implicit theory of social change and political process
to its perspective on America’s place in the world.
358
As a predominantly white group,
the HDC’s active commitment to complete social equality across racial lines was
distinctive and yet the lens through which it understood and advanced these efforts was
mired in contradictions. The HDC tackled racial issues far more directly than the
progressive groups of the 1930s, but the legacy of earlier frames of reference—especially
in regard to assumptions about the inherent virtue of “the people”—remained influential.
The HDC’s response to the “Zoot Suit Riots”—which took place in Los Angeles
as part of a nation-wide wave of violence against non-whites during the summer of
1943—exemplifies their socially remarkable, yet politically problematic perspective. The
group was one the first and most fervently committed liberal organizations to respond to
the Zoot Suit Riots. The HDC brought attention to the fact that Mexican-American,
Filipino-American and African-American juveniles were the victims of white
servicemen’s attacks, not the aggressors. Its leaders called out the city’s major
newspapers for their influential role in whipping up the racist and violent frenzy through

358
On race and anti-racism, see Michelle Brattain, “Race, Racism, and Anti-Racism: UNESCO and the
Politics of Presenting Race to the Postwar Public,” American Historical Review, 112 (December 2007)
1386-1413; and David Levitus, “From Color Line to Culture Line? Life Magazine and the Shifting
Meanings of Race and Race-Mixing Through ‘The American Century,’” unpublished article.
204
mischaracterization of what had happened. They noted that the influx of white
Southerners contributed to the racial tension and they recognized the importance of
“social and economic injustice” in placing the Zoot Suiters in their subordinate,
scapegoated position.
359

But the HDC also tended to see race through a set of anti-fascist and American
populist lenses, which minimized the popular prevalence of white racism, and that in
turn, distorted the strategy and tactics for working against racism and toward a more
democratic society. The HDC diagnosed the proximate cause of the riots as “instigat[ion]
by defeatists and Fifth Columnists to disrupt the war effort.” According to the HDC,
“every sociologist, every historian worth his salt agrees today that racial and national
differences in America have never caused violent outbreaks at any time in our history
unless they were provoked by someone with an axe to grind.” Merwin K. Hart, speaker
before the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association, and practitioner of Liberty
League-style politics was one such provocateur. The KKK was another. And the papers
controlled by wealthy reactionaries, Hearst’s and Chandler’s foremost among them, led
the way.
Given this framing, the HDC’s leaders concluded that racism had to “be fought
hard – with mass meetings to awaken the people to their dangers, by radio talks, by the
publication of pamphlets, and by organization of the people to demand the immediate

359
Hollywood Democratic Committee History Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, pp. 8-10;
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” December 1943, Vol. 1, No. 8, HDC Records, Box 8,
Folder 7, p. 1.
205
passage and enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation!”
360
Their efforts assumed that
“the people” were blank slates, of sorts, naturally inclined toward equality, who only had
to be roused and mobilized. Compared to the “racial liberals” who would soon come
dominate white activism against racial tension, HDC members were more radical in their
commitment to economic justice and more ambitious in their mass media and mass
organizing approach. Nonetheless their strategy bore a resemblance to the Myrdhal-
inspired work of racial liberals to change “hearts and minds.”
To their credit, however, the HDC leaders recognized that after the riots ended,
white supremacism continued across the metropolis, its proponents attempting to defend
and entrench it in the landscape of daily life.
In Culver City, petitions are being covertly circulated through the local Civilian Defense
Board “to keep the niggers out of town.” This will block a sadly needed government
housing project in Venice designed to enhance war production. In Watts, a government
housing project for Negro war workers was killed by local real estate interests
represented by a certain Mr. Oliver B. De Hogg, who publicly declared: “New York
kikes are coming here to put niggers in the neighborhood. We’re going to stop them.”
Walter Carroll, realty broker, said, “After all, we Caucasians are certainly not going to
stand for any colored people deteriorating our property. If the Jews want them, they can
have them.”

360
They thought these type of publicity efforts would work to quash racism because they saw racism as a
nefarious plot, foisted on an basically virtuous people by outsiders. If “the people” were essentially good, it
would be easily to mobilize them against racism. There was no contemplation that “the people” were
deeply implicated in white supremacy themselves.
206
Through their commitment to anti-discrimination legislation and racially
integrated government-built housing, HDC activists attempted to inscribe equality into
the urban landscape.
361
And they strove to include African-Americans among its leaders
and to provide targeted appeals to various nonwhite groups. By 1944, black minister Rev.
Clayton Russell served on the Executive Council. In June of that year, the nominating
committee suggested inviting other “prominent Negroes”—actors Lena Horne, Hattie
McDaniel, Rex Ingram, and composer William Grant Still—to join the board. By August,
Ingram—the chairman of the recently formed Republican Negro Committee for the
Reelection of Roosevelt—was exhorting the HDC Board to focus on voter registration
among the large population of recent migrants from the South. The Board listened to him,
and cancelled their own scheduled meeting to attend a “Negro community meeting”
instead.
362

Mary Dudziak and Shana Bernstein have both highlighted the ways in which the
Cold War bolstered the arguments for the civil rights of nonwhites and narrowed the

361
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” December 1943, Vol. 1, No. 8, HDC Records, Box 8,
Folder 7, p. 3. The first meeting include the following organizations: “Downtown Businessmen’s
Association, Kiwanis, League of Women Voters, CIO, Council for Social Agencies, AFL American Jewish
Congress, YMCA, Univets [the American Legion post of Universal Pictures], Women’s Club of
Hollywood, United Retail Grocers Association, Fair Employment Practices Committee, Independent Labor
Guilds, NAACP, Hadassah, Probation Dept., IWO, Hidalgo Benefit Society, American Friends of Hebrew
University, East L.A. Prop Owners Association.” However, the coalition they brought together—the
Council for Civic Unity—to combat racism and to prevent race riots which threatened the all-important war
effort–would soon slide toward a more moderate, racial liberal position, away from the metropolitan
progressive perspective of one of its main conveners. For the Council’s evolution, see Barbara Soliz,
“Liberal Politics and Whiteness in Multiracial Los Angeles, 1941-1973,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of
Southern California, 2013).
362
Minutes of the Executive Council, August 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 5; Minutes of the
Executive Board, 16 June 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6, p. 1; Minutes of the Executive Board, 18
August 1944 - HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6, p. 2.
207
scope of those arguments by placing them within a defensive international context and by
stripping away questions of economic injustice.
363
Popular Front-era liberals were
decidedly committed to economic and social justice, but they too linked questions of
minority rights to the advancement of the position of the U.S. in the world. Their
rhetorical strategies laid the ground for similar tropes in Cold War struggles for civil
rights; more importantly, they exemplified the kind of American populism and all-or-
nothing binary simplification of politics that would come to haunt progressives. Such
frames would spawn divisions within their ranks and would provide an opportunity for
their adversaries to attack them as hypocrites.
Only weeks after the Zoot Suit Riots, the HDC urged the repeal of the Chinese
Exclusion Act in a letter to Rep. Samuel Dickstein, the Chairman of the House
Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, and through its membership
bulletin/newsletter. The “undemocratic” nature of the Act and the fact that it stood
“contrary to the principles our country is fighting for” certainly counted against the Act in
the HDC’s estimation, yet the dominant emphasis was on how the Act insulted the U.S.’s
Chinese ally and gave the “Japanese propagandists” (“agile liars”) the opportunity to
show that the U.S. “considers the Chinese an inferior race,” American “talk of equality
and freedom for all races is but an empty mockery” and there’s “no intention of applying
the principles of the Atlantic Charter to the Orient.”
364
The emphasis in the HDC’s

363
Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000);
364
George Pepper to Rep. Samuel Dickstein, Chairman of the House Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization, 28 June 1943, HDC Records, Box 2, Folder 14; “TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the
HDC,” 26 July 1943, Vol. 1, No. 4, HDC Records, Box 8, Folder 7, p. 2.
208
exhortations was on how racial discrimination tarnished the image of the U.S. and its
global mission for democracy, and thus undermined its foreign policy, from winning
World War II to applying the Atlantic Charter across the world.
Likewise, the HDC vocally defended the War Relocation Authority, against
attacks from the conservative Dies Committee, by highlighting “its fair and unbiased
treatment of Japanese-American citizens under its jurisdiction.” The HDC elided the very
bias which led to the selective internment of only Japanese-Americans by stressing the
lack of bias once they were interned. In the grip of total commitment to American and
Allied victory in the World War, as part of their American nationalism, and single-
minded, binary progressive global struggle, the HDC defended Japanese-Americans by
highlighting their valiant participation in the U.S. military’s “People’s War”
365

Thus, when FDR died in 1945, the resulting situation pressed into stark relief
progressives’ dependence on the now-deceased Democratic President for symbolic and
policy leadership. The HDC consistently valorized FDR as “a mighty solider in people’s
war for peace and security”—not interested in noting his political weaknesses during or
after his lifetime. His death led the HDC to emphasize the important, if mundane business
of legislation through “city, county, state, national, and international assemblies.”
Emphasis shifted from the inherently progressive history of the U.S. to the need for
determined activism: “The President is only as strong as we are strong. The nation is only
as progressive as we are progressive; the peace of the world is only as secure as our

365
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 15.
209
determination to make that peace secure.”
366
If a more accurate rendering of the
relationship between American policy and progressives’ own struggle, it nonetheless
reduced policy success to the question of will power and purity on the part of
progressives, with no reference to the strategic methods through which a progressive
transformation could overcome the lingering power of various conservative institutions
and ideologies that predominated across the political and social landscape of the United
States.

“Politics as a Creative Art”
The concept of “politics as a creative art” originated with Dr. Franklin Fearing,
professor of psychology at UCLA and HDC Board Member, in his address to the HDC’s
membership. In this 1945 piece, “Culture and Politics,” he posed the rhetorical question:
What, exactly, is the job in the community which you are best fitted to do? What,
practically, is your relationship to other agencies? If you are not merely engaged in the
spasmodic – and very exciting – business of electing good and fair-to-middling
candidates to office and perhaps checking up on them occasionally after they are elected,
what additional functions should you do?
367

366
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” May 1945, Vol. 2, No. 1, HDC Records, Box 8, Folder
7.
367
Dr. Franklin Fearing, Address to the 1945 HDC Membership Meeting on “Culture and Politics,” HDC
Records, Box 1 Folder 7, p. 2.
210
The answer, Dr. Fearing suggested, was to transcend the artificial divide between
culture and politics, narrowly conceived. If they remained separate, with “practical
politics” centered on politicians who relied on “manipulation and exploitation” to pursue
their ambitions, progressive policy and social change would be nearly impossible to
achieve. The heart of the problem was the proverbial “man in the street.”
368
Without
clarity about his situation and the ability to coordinate his actions with his fellow citizens,
a strong and effective political force for progress would never coalesce. Only if the
“forces of culture and education” aligned with political values and aims, would it be
possible for an ordinary citizen to realize his own interests, “to acquire the techniques of
appraisal of men and values in order that he may control his destiny.” Not the low
average level of intelligence among the citizenry, but the “social context” of politics was
responsible for the dilemma of democracy in the age of mass communications.
Culture workers, Dr. Fearing professed to the audience, had a unique ability to
move from a politics of narrow “realism,” to a politics of possibility, “politics as a
creative art.” If those in the arts, sciences, and other cultural fields relinquished “self
complacency and cast iron isolation” from one another and from the public, they could
shape the nation’s broader culture as a year-round activity, and the periodic campaigns
would begin to reflect this shift in consciousness.
369
Fortunately, Fearing, noted, “the
culture worker in the mass media of communications” was becoming “consciously aware

368
Fearing, p. 3
369
Ibid., p. 3
211
of the responsibilities to society in crisis which his craft as such commits him,” as
indicated by events like the 1943 Writers Conference at UCLA.
370

Fearing’s presentation engaged the aspirations and tensions at the heart of Popular
Front progressive politics. The progressive idiom in these years was the Lincoln-esque
credo “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Yet despite the overwhelming
victories of President Roosevelt and the significant Democratic majorities in both houses
of Congress, it was clear to progressives that the persistent influence of conservatives
within the Democratic Party and the resurgence of a bipartisan “conservative coalition” in
Congress meant that their work was far from complete. Every election was a pitched
battle on less than favorable terrain. And organizing large numbers of ordinary people
and then mobilizing them to vote and lobby regularly was never easy. The solution was
for progressives to try and relocate the debate to more favorable grounds.
371
Once there,
the laborious, but necessary work of “ringing of doorbells, organizing meetings, stuffing
envelopes, preparing radio scripts, collecting money, and riding herd on politicians”
would be far easier and more productive. Along these lines, in the middle of 1945, the
HDC formed a “Psychological Attack Committee to formulate new ideas and ways of
explaining the issues of the day.”
372

370
Ibid., p. 4
371
Ibid., p. 5
372
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 6 July 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 7.
212
The National Accomplishments of the Hollywood Democratic Committee
More concretely, the participation of workers from the arts and entertainment
industries in Popular Front-era liberal politics also offered numerous, tangible benefits in
the course of electoral and lobbying campaigns. Their high-profile and ability to attract
attention, their creative talent, and the considerable financial resources they brought to
politics helped to tilt the playing field in favor of their allies for a decade.
While part of the Hollywood Democratic Committee’s relevance derives from its
status as “the only organization working effectively for Democratic aims in California,”
in Robert Kenny’s words, its enduring significance owes to the possibilities for
progressive activism through the mass media and thus at a national scale. Many
organizations grappled with the contradictions of Popular Front-era political culture and
the challenges of local organizing, but those able to work extensively and expertly in the
realm of mass media and culture were few in number.
Committed to California politics and rooted in Los Angeles, far from the
traditional Eastern power centers, the HDC nonetheless took its mandate to be national
from its start. While Labor’s Non-Partisan League, the Progressive National Committee,
CIO-PAC, and NCPAC developed as specifically national efforts, grounded in local
organizing, and directed by the official leadership of progressive Democrats in New York
and Washington, DC; the HDC never sought to expand its local organizing beyond
Southern California. Allied with Eastern-based progressive Democratic leadership, the
group nonetheless charted its own course. But more than any other organization, the
HDC offered a unique toolkit to progressive candidates and causes. In addition to its local
213
organizing and its ability to raise unprecedented sums of money, the HDC offered the
cultural sway of celebrity, backed an enormous reservoir of behind-the-scenes talent:
cartoonists, writers, directors, and producers. In this sense, despite its firm base in
Southern California, the HDC was an undoubtedly national organization.
This section elucidates the national possibilities embodied in the HDC and its
approach by telling the story of the group’s stated intentions and diverse array of actions
from 1943 through 1946, as well as exploring the inherent challenges of the work. The
subtext is the institutional infrastructure and repertoire of strategies would be lost as the
HDC’s successor organizations—the Progressive Citizens of America and Progressive
Party—went defunct. The HDC’s example is the context for thinking through how a
similarly-positioned progressive organization might have made a difference in American
politics as the society shifted toward a suburban, TV-centered lifestyle and landscape.
Coalescing out of efforts to boost Culbert Olson’s campaign for Governor, the
HDC’s early work, like that of the MPDC, maintained a firmly national and even
international focus, even as it worked through local and state channels. As HDC Board
Member Morris Cohen articulated the consensus perspective, only broad national and
international issues drew the interest of HDC members and the voting public, even if
district, city, county and state level policy-making mattered greatly in practice.
373
Ideally,
“explain[ing] the URGENCY of the need for basic win-the-war measures nationally and
on a state-wide basis” would translate to more responsive politicians at local levels of

373
Minutes of the Executive Board [comprehensive version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6, p. 4.
214
government.
374
The emphasis was on winning the war against the Axis powers and
winning the peace by creating a more economically and racially democratic U.S. and a
more just international system. Critical policies went through the federal government,
where power was divided between a progressive-leaning President and a Congress where
a conservative coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats had thwarted
progressive legislation since the late 1930s.
Thus, the main avenue for effecting this change, at least as the HDC understood
and practiced it, was to influence the election of Congressional representatives and to
lobby them during their term of office. Because of the territorial bases of representation
in the American polity, nation-wide political efforts demanded actions targeted to specific
districts. A general ideological program was necessary, but not sufficient. Political
contests in each district consisted of battles between particular politicians, rather than
programs in the abstract. The continental scope of the country resulted in a wide variety
of political and social conditions across districts. Despite these hurdles, the HDC
aggressively entered hundreds of contests during its few years of existence.
So in addition to a consistent focus on Congressmen local to Southern California,
the HDC participated in a nation-wide media campaigns, which first began at the behest
of the Democratic National Committee in 1943.
375
This nation-wide media campaign
accelerated in 1944 as the Presidential year elections approached. The HDC’s efforts

374
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” May 1945, Vol. 2, No. 1, HDC Records, Box 8, Folder
7, p. 3.
375
Minutes of the Executive Board [comprehensive version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6, p. 4.
215
were notable for their great breadth and significant depth. Although the group would
orchestrate an impressive campaign in 1946, 1944 was the pinnacle of its work. Its
campaign echoed the MPDC’s 1938 campaign, but on a far wider scale. Election
campaigns, however, (then as now) provided a ready-made opportunity for massive,
widespread mobilizations because they centered on a very specific, concrete, finite set of
objectives.
Beginning in February 1944, the HDC organized its members along the lines of
their special talents. Specialists in radio, writing, newspaper publishing, cartooning,
publicity, as well as well-known actors and speakers, all clustered into their own division
or committee. These included those dedicated to: Radio, Actors, Speakers, Writers,
Newspaper, Cartoonists, and Publicity. The HDC’s first round of efforts focused on
registering voters, both in Southern California and nationally in the early spring. In
addition to pushing Mayor Bowron to declare the last week of March as “Registration
Week,” the HDC got motion picture stars to act as Los Angles County deputy registrars
to draw attention to the issue. An HDC –produced radio program (sponsored by United
Citizens Comte of the Motion Picture Industry) was broadcast over the NBC national
network, March 24 and rebroadcast by local stations KFWB and KMPC.
376
Another half-
hour show on voter registration, featuring Olivia de Havilland, Jimmy Durante, and Gene
Kelly went out on CBS nationally, with 500 sets distributed for use on local stations
across the country the HDC paid for 45 short radio spot announcements a day and

376
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 20.
216
distributed posters and “throw-aways”—flyers highlighting important issues at stake in
the elections.
377

In anticipation of the May 16 primary elections in California, the HDC launched
another round of salvos. The Radio Division aired 450 spot announcements on nine radio
stations at all times of day and night between May 2 and May 15. These were so effective
that the AFL borrowed them for their own use. In reference to these, the HDC claimed
credit for the innovative “development of the broken record technique in primaries.” In
addition, there were a plethora of long-form radio pieces. On May 11, a Hollywood Town
Meeting aired on CBS featuring the reading of the HDC-endorsed slate of primary
candidates. Fifteen minute programs aired on the region’s two major stations (KNX, FKI)
and thirty minute “Hollywood for Roosevelt” went out initially on KNX May 13, with
repeats on four other major stations (KFI, KWB, KFAC and KMPC) over the next two
days.
378

In addition to financial outlay and the in-kind contribution of talent involved in
this radio effort, the HDC provided $15,000 worth of assistance directly to primary
candidates. The money enabled the publication and dissemination of 500,000 folders;
300,000 stamped mailing envelopes; 7,000 placards; 100,000 postcards; 150,000 tabloid
newspapers with cartoons and many thousands of bumper strips (i.e. “stickers”).
379
The

377
Report on Campaign Activities of the HDC as of 27 October 1944, HDC Records, Box 4, Folder 6, p. 3;
378
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 21;
Report for Yip Harburg, 20 April 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 1.
379
Report on HDC Electoral Campaign Expenditures in 1944, HDC Records, Box 4, Folder 6.
217
HDC extensively advertised in local newspapers, provided volunteer support at candidate
headquarters and supplied well-known Hollywood figures to gin up attendance and
excitement at mass meetings and rallies around Southern California.
380

In particular, the defeat of Rep. Costello, a conservative Democrat who had
opposed the Lend-Lease bill, was a high priority. The HDC’s all-out drive against him
included inundating the district with the distribution of 150,000 tabloid newspapers and a
similar large mailing. Witty radio ads, including one of constituent Rita Hayworth
intimating “I don’t think I can be blamed for calling him a renegade Democrat”,
undermined his standing. Local supermarkets were the scenes of picketing that charged
him with trying to raise the cost of milk.
381

But it was in the general elections where the HDC truly shined. The organization
took advantage of the mass medium of radio like no other group had before. It created
spot announcements for 162 Senate and House candidates (all of whom supported the
group’s “Win-the-War Pledge,”) using the new “Broken Record” technique of repeating
the same, short political message, hundreds of times over. In Southern California alone it
produced forty-five spots and purchased radio time across twenty-six days. Additional
spots were specially prepared for “Negro and Spanish-American” voters. Olivia de

380
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 21.
381
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 82. A few weeks after his defeat, Costello complained that
“Workers called at every home, voters were repeatedly telephoned, literature…flooded the district, despite
the paper shortage and the radio programs went into full swing along with continual newspaper
advertisements.”
218
Haviland starred in advertisements and Humphrey Bogart narrated a five-minute
special.
382
The campaign ended with an impressive flourish.
To support these efforts, the DNC loaned the group $8,000 for the purchase of
airtime in multiple media markets. At the tail end of the campaign, the HDC produced
two national broadcasts, one of which was nominated for a Peabody award. Copies of
these were sent to every small radio station in the United States.
383
At the request of the
Democratic National Committee, the HDC produced an election-eve appeal that was
broadcast over all four national radio networks. The script was by Norman Corwin, who,
despite lacking political advertising experience, had earned a “reputation for producing
accessibly, even lyrical, programs on such weighty subjects as the Bill of Rights.” A
“who’s who” of mass culture stars participated. Humphrey Bogart narrated, E. Y. “Yip”
Harburg co-wrote the songs that Judy Garland sang, and satirical sketches were
performed by James Cagney and Groucho Marx. Interspersed among the celebrity voices
were those of ordinary people—a Tennessee farmer, a brakemen on the New York
Central Railroad, and Michigan housewife. The final part of the program featured a
stream of stars endorsing FDR, one after the other. At the CBS Studios in Hollywood,
they included Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Bennet, Irving Berlin, Claudette Colbert, Joseph
Cotton, John Garfield, Rita Hayworth, George Jessel, Danny Kaye, Gene Kelley,
Groucho Marx and George Raft, Edward G. Robinson, Lana Turner and Jane Wyman.

382
Ibid., 99.
383
Report on Campaign Activities of the HDC as of 27 October 1944, HDC Records, Box 4, Folder 6, pp.
3-4; History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 24.
219
From New York, more than ten others—Dorothy Parker, Charles Boyer, Milton Berle,
Franchot Tone, and Frank Sinatra—chimed in as well.
384

Furthermore, the HDC leveraged the celebrity appeal of actors by sending them
throughout Southern California and across the country. As soon as the HDC’s
considerable reservoir of talent became widely known, requests for assistance flooded in
from Democratic groups across the country and at the national level. Washington State
Democrats asked for Welles, Olivia de Havilland, or Edward G. Robinson; a group in
Milwaukee requested George Jessel to emcee a meeting; Tulsans asked for “any
Hollywood personality” and Kern County Democrats asked for as many celebrities as
could be spared for a rally in Bakersfield, California. Even New York’s Independent
Voters Committee, which included many major cultural figures in its own right, wanted
Bob Hope.
385
Hundreds of speakers fanned out around the country. Many came from the
Actors Division. Others originated with the Speakers Division, which operated a booking
service that could deploy appropriate people to gatherings that ranged from small precinct
groups to mass city-wide rallies. Another subgrouping, the Actors Unit, composed of
young actors created “a new kind of political-dramatic activities” which were performed
throughout Southern California and reached approximately 42,000 people. The HDC also
arranged from prominent actors to sign on as authors of articles that appeared in local
newspaper and periodicals across the U.S. Musicians contributed their own special talents

384
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 100-101.
385
Memo, Mr. Hamm to Mr. Biow, regarding HDC, 28 August 1944, HDC Records, Box 2, Folder 20;
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 99, 97, 94, 96.
220
to the a mass meeting at the Shrine featuring New Mexico Senator Dennis Chavez, the
Shrine Ball for Truman, and the major November radio programs.
Reprising Melvin Douglas’s role in the 1940 election, Orson Welles barnstormed
the country to spread the President’s message. Because the HDC lacked the capacity to
arrange and finance his trip, Welles set out on his own. He made appearances in NYC,
NJ, L.A., Florida, and WB. In New York, he introduced Wallace at Madison Square
Garden rally and spoke for the President in a New York Herald Tribune forum, which
included Dewey. He took to the airwaves of Warner Brothers, NBC, CBS, and the
Mutual Broadcasting Network.
386
Among the most impressive new recruit to the
Hollywood liberal coalition was Frank Sinatra, a brand new pop star, who “used his new
fame to preach racial tolerance and street-corner populism” drawing on his childhood and
adolescent experiences in a “a tough, racially mixed neighborhood in urban New
Jersey.”
387

The Writer’s Division, 200 professionals strong, was especially impressive and
important. The division was instrumental in crafting speeches for public speakers,
material for radio broadcasts, skits of the actors division and advertisements across a
range of media. It created the slogan “Let’s Win the Peace, Too,” designed corresponding
graphics and generated attention in Southern California in particular by purchasing 200
billboards. For a national audience, the writers produced posters, pamphlets, and “throw-
aways”—flyers highlighting important issues at stake in the elections. For a specifically

387
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 93.
221
Mexican-American audience, the division crafted an educational pamphlet on voting.
And with the writers’ help, the Newspaper Committee produced four issues of a full-size
newspaper, “The Free Press” between September and November 1944. Sponsored by
L.A. County Central Democratic Committee, the circulation of each issue ranged
between 600,000 and one million. The Cartoonists Division, 100 strong, labored to
illustrate the torrent of published material.
388

To support these efforts, the HDC had raised a massive amount of money.
Fundraising benefited from a wartime spirit of unity and anti-fascism, which garnered
support from formerly ambivalent film industry executives. The Warner brothers, for
instance, returned to their early 1930s support for FDR and helped to organize a major
fundraiser for the HDC.
389
In the span of only a few weeks at the beginning of 1944,
Pepper was able to raise $35,000.
390
By the time the November election concluded, the
HDC had expended $118,000.
The group spent most of this money to mobilize voters—very little went to
overhead costs. Approximately $20,000 went directly to candidates in the general
election, following the $15,000 in the primaries. Spending on radio totaled $24,000,
three-quarters of which went to the purchase of airtime. Sixteen thousand was used for
purposes of publicity and advertising. The Free Press publication took a little over ten

388
Report on Campaign Activities of the HDC as of 27 October 1944, HDC Records, Box 4, Folder 6, pp.
3-4; History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 24.
389
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 92.
390
Ibid., 82.
222
thousand, while $14,000 flowed to the Southern California Democratic Party Campaign
Committee, and $15,000 went to other campaign expenses such as billboards, posters,
periodicals, papers. Less than ten percent went to fundraising costs and even less was
required for operating expenses, such as salaries and telephones.
391

The HDC’s rapid growth into an organization with a nation-wide impact—if still
a largely Southern California footprint—pushed it immediately into the ranks of other
leading Popular Front progressive groups, which conceived of themselves in national
terms. By June of 1944, the CIO Political Action Committee and its middle-class
auxiliary, the National Citizens Political Action Committee, had requested assistance
from the HDC in their election campaigns, both in Southern California and in locales
across the country. Nationally, cooperation proceeded well. Only in Southern California,
where the HDC jealously guarded its local organizing, did collaboration weaken over
personality conflicts, turf battles and joint fundraising efforts.
392

The California Dream of the Hollywood Democratic Committee
If Hollywood’s most notable and exceptional roles in politics were the powers of
celebrity and the check-book, progressives in the film community nonetheless retained a
strong interested in placed-based organizing. Local, even district organizing had
precedents in the years of the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, and picked up very
early in the history of the Hollywood Democratic Committee. In the first months of the

391
Report on HDC Electoral Campaign Expenditures in 1944, HDC Records, Box 4, Folder 6.
392
Telegram, HDC to Sidney Hillman, 1 September 1944, HDC Records, Box 5, Folder 14.
223
HDC, after its January 1943 establishment, three locally-based affiliates of the HDC
developed, one after another: the Valley Democratic Committee, the Beachwood
Democratic Committee, and the Beverly-Westwood Committee. Because there were few
institutional avenues for progressive participation in local, Democratic politics, HDC
members created their own local organizations. There were several ever-present, inter-
related tensions, however, in the HDC’s locally-grounded work. HDC members wrestled
with how to relate to other locally-based progressive organizations, some of which grew
in importance as the years passed. With a comparative advantage clearly in the realm of
national celebrity appeal and fundraising abilities, combined with the membership’s
overwhelming interest in national and international issues, the HDC’s interest in and
commitment to local organizing appeared anomalous. Yet several factors combined to
push the HDC to retain a local base.
First, because the American political system was so fragmented, there were
multiple levels—municipal, county, state, and federal—at which to influence policy, and
because representation was territorially based, affecting each of these levels required
pressure from locally-grounded policymakers and the easiest conduit to federal
policymaking remained locally-elected Congressmen and Senators. Second, the film
community was concentrated in a relatively small geographical area—from Hollywood to
the Westside to the San Fernando Valley. Neighborhood-based organizing thus had a
certain logic and seemingly self-evident appeal to it. Finally, the social inequalities and
injustices which progressives sought to reverse were inscribed onto metropolitan
224
landscape, so progressive organizing would logically have to organize and mobilize
change at this scale.
The Hollywood Democratic Committee began its life as a mass membership
organization, albeit of unique sort. Where the Motion Picture Democratic Committee had
reached 300 members during its short existence, the HDC began with 180 at its inaugural
January 1943 meeting and grew to over 3,000 by its peak in 1946.
393
The rank-and-file
of the film community, rather than just the leading lights joined; other opportunities for
participation aside from headlining rallies or starring in radio ads were necessary. The
neighborhood committees that quickly emerged served this role. The first of these, the
Valley Committee, had come into existence before the HDC’s establishment, but formal
affiliation with the HDC in early spring of 1943 energized it. Led by publicist Don King,
the Valley Committee was in the process of organizing community branches in all parts
of the San Fernando Valley, beginning with Woodland Hills, building on its history of
activism in the First L.A. City Council District. At the same time, the Beachwood
Democratic Committee formed in the “Hollywoodland area,” including notables such as
Jay Lyman, Edward Biberman, Frank Tuttle, George Scott, Herbert Biberman and Mr.
and Mrs. Russell Lambeau among its early leadership.
394

395

393
In L.A. NCPAC membership was 4200, HICCASP was 3200. The combined total was 7000 because of
overlap in membership between the two organizations.
394
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” April 1943, Vol. 1, No. 1, HDC Records, Box 8,
Folder 7, p. 1.
395
As the HDC geared up in the late winter of 1943, local elections, events, and organizing were at the
forefront of its work. Despite this early municipal orientation, the HDC’s organizing always tied issues into
a broader national and international context.
225
Despite this neighborhood-based organizing, the causes that most animated the
HDC membership were national and international. This was the case even in the first half
of 1943 when HDC focused its attention on L.A. City Council. At the group’s first
membership meeting in March, Mayor Bowron was the lead speaker and municipal
elections headed the agenda. At the second membership meeting in July, the HDC touted
its success in helping Bowron to achieve a 9-6 majority on the L.A. City Council and
defeating a municipal sales tax.
396
These local efforts, the HDC suggested, were
intimately tied to the cause of “winning the war” (at least the progressive version of it as
a broad “people’s war” for democracy). And this logic led the HDC to shift to
emphasizing locally-grounded organizing to affect national politics, which in theory
would trickle down to alter local level policies, rather than directly targeting local
policymakers. As a May 1943 HDC newsletter explained,
If we can explain the URGENCY of the need for basic win-the-war
measures nationally and on a state-wide basis we shall find that the City
Council will be encouraged to pass local legislation that will implement
the national legislation. But, if we concentrate on demanding the passage
of local legislation, without having explained and mobilized our people
around the national issues, there will be no passage of measures locally.
That is why the work of the Valley and Beachwood Democratic
Committees becomes so interesting. They are concentrating on national
and state affairs from now on – through Forums, Town Halls, Lectures,
and letter-writing campaigns to elected representatives.
397

In October 1943, a twenty people in West Los Angeles called a meeting to form a
Beverly-Westwood Democratic Committee, affiliated to the HDC. Seventy people

396
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 20.
397
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” May 1943, Vol. 1, No. 2, HDC Records, Box 8, Folder
7, p. 3.
226
attended, almost sixty joined, and within a week, their number had tripled.
398
Led initially
by Sue Rossen and Betty Sperling, the Beverly-Westwood group planned a series of
house parties and one large mass meeting to engage its members and grow its base. At
the HDC Executive Board October meeting, the women argued that the “effectiveness of
these home meetings” to date had shown a need for a speaker’s bureau, drawing on the
HDC’s wealth of talent to raise political consciousness throughout the city. Moving to
define the relationship between affiliated groups and the HDC, the Board agreed that
each group would have one voting member on the Executive Board, that the groups
would coordinate their efforts, and that there would be no membership dues.
399

In terms of concrete local actions, Don King reported that the HDC was
collaborating with other progressive and labor groups to create slates for the Democratic
County Central Committee in Congressional Districts 15, 16, and 20, the Westside and
Valley areas where the HDC’s membership was concentrated.
400
Electing and lobbying
members of Congress was the principal focus of the HDC’s local work. As a newsletter
entitled Grassroots Growl put it:
“To make certain Congress doesn’t forget, political organization is
springing up everywhere, spearheaded by an aroused labor movement.
Minimum programs, around which a broad majority of people can unite
behind the President’s war policies, are being formulated. Issues are being
examined as never before against the realism of war needs, and

398
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” October 1943, Vol. 1, No. 6, HDC Records, Box 8,
Folder 7, p. 1.
399
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [comprehensive version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6, p. 2.
400
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [concise version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder
6.
227
Congressmen are being told in no uncertain terms to get in step with
modern history – or else!”
401

Working alongside the CIO-PAC, the Motion Picture Labor Council for Political
Action, and a Unity for Political Action Committee organized by 400 progressive AFL
delegates, the HDC undertook a vigorous program. On October 6, the HDC convened the
first meeting of a 15
th
Congressional District Legislative Council. Out in the Valley, the
20
th
Congressional District Legislative Council announced the official affiliation of 17
unions, which cumulatively represented 35,000 voters.
402
CIO-PAC leader Sidney
Hillman had recently arrived in Los Angeles, greeted by a Citizens Committee led by
Attorney General Kenny. While in town, Hillman gave his blessing to the idea of creating
legislative councils for each district composed of the broadest possible array of delegates
from CIO, AFL, and progressive groups.
403

The HDC arranged meetings with conservative Democratic Congressman John
Costello, and two conservative Republican Representatives Norris Poluson and Carl
Hinshaw. These interviews attracted a great deal of public attention, and the one with
Costello was fully reported in the Hollywood Citizen News on August 13, 1943.
404
As a
result of the meeting and organizing effort, Poulson had changed his stance on the Office

401
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” October 1943, Vol. 1, No. 6, HDC Records, Box 8,
Folder 7, p. 1.
402
“TARGET FOR TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” October 1943, Vol. 1, No. 6, HDC Records, Box 8,
Folder 7, p. 1.
403
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [comprehensive version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6, p. 2.
404
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 15.
228
of War Information (OWI) and voted for subsidies. The HDC’s efforts had succeeded in
integrating the efforts of labor groups with those of white-collar workers. The Beverly-
Westwood Committee had reached more than 200 members and the HDC had assisted in
establishing a Democratic Party organization in the Silver Lake neighborhood. At a
membership meeting in January 1944, progressive Democratic leader Robert Kenny
urged HDC members to participate as individuals in local Democratic groups, to be “the
yeast that will make those clubs rise.”
405

In the late winter of 1944, the Executive Board began to formulate a strategy for
influencing congressional elections throughout the Los Angeles area, in districts 12
through 20. In District 13, they asked John Anson Ford to run against Republican Rep.
Poulson and considered persuading Joseph Aidlin as a second choice. In District 14, they
debated the multiplicity of decent progressive candidates: Mr. Baumgartner, Vernon
Kilpatrick, Vernon Bennett, and Augustus Hawkins—the first black Democratic
Assemblyman, and then Congressman from southern California. In the 15
th
District, they
discussed possibility of having Alvin Wilder run against Costello, because he was
interested, liked by the AFL and CIO, and had a large public following from his radio
broadcasts. The names of Margaret Workman—from long-standing progressive Catholic
L.A. family—and singer Helen Gahagan Douglas, wife of screen star Melvyn Douglas,
were also floated. Regarding the 16
th
District, Oliver Schwab spoke for the Beverly-
Westwood Committee in articulating their commitment to be active in the race.
Discussion focused on the relative electability of Walter Abel, Walter Huston, Mary

405
Minutes of the HDC Membership Meeting, 12 January 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 9.
229
McCall Jr., and Ellis Patterson. The HDC resolved to delegate the endorsement decision
to the Beverly-Westwood group, in conjunction with the HDC’s liaison committee.
McCall was the first choice initially, with Huston and Abel as back-ups. Similarly, the
question of who to endorse in the 20
th
district was delegated in large part to the Valley
Democratic Committee. One person mentioned that radio commentator Chet Huntley as
an interested and potentially strong candidate to take on Republican Representative
Hinshaw, while another proposed L.A. Democratic leader Rollin McKnitt. The HDC
board even discussed endorsements in assembly district races, choosing to delegate
decisions on the 59
th
and 60
th
Assembly Districts to the Beverly-Westwood group and to
have Elmer Lore and King coordinate with the Valley Committee on who could best
oppose Everett Burkholder in the 42
nd
AD.
406
By March, the HDC had decided which
congressional candidates to endorse. Only on the contentious race in CD 13 was a
decision left entirely to the membership, with no guidance from the board.
407

In the spring of 1944, the HDC returned to the matter of how its neighborhood
area affiliates related to the larger group. District-based organizing and mobilization was
the clear domain of the Valley, Beachwood, and Beverly-Westwood groups, while the
HDC central leadership would coordinate the cultural industry’s participation in
progressive politics at a variety of scales. HDC board members emphasized the need for
closer collaboration between these different parts of the organization. It seems that the

406
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 6 February 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
407
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 2 March 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6; “TARGET FOR
TODAY: Bulletin of the HDC,” May 1944, HDC Records, Box 8, Folder 7.
230
neighborhood area groups had taken on a life of their own and their relationship to the
HDC was unclear. At the next Board meeting, in May, the leadership decided that anyone
currently involved in the affiliates would count as members of the central HDC as well.
In the future, however, only “industry members” would enjoy dual membership. New
“non-industry members” could belong only to the affiliates.
408

During the 1944 elections, although the HDC directed considerable energy within
Southern California, especially in local congressional races, the bulk of its efforts went
toward national work. The HDC created radio spot announcements for 162 Senate and
Congressional candidates throughout the U.S., arranged by DNC, including spots
specially prepared for and directed to “Spanish-American and Negro voters.” Despite the
actors’ national popularity, their physical, in-person presence during the campaign
remained heavily concentrated in Southern California. While some traveled to the East
Coast and others went up the West Coast, it was in their home terrain where the “Actors
Mobile Unit” reached approximately 42,000 people and where HDC speakers served
hundreds of meetings in Los Angeles.
409
The HDC claimed credit for the development of
the “broken record technique” in primaries and for the election of five Congressmen in
the L.A. area.
After the election, as part of its attempt to be the base in the motion picture
industry for a “people’s movement” of “all democratic forces” locally and nationally, the

408
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 14 April 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6. Minutes of the
HDC Executive Board, 22 May 22 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
409
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 23;
Report for Yip Harburg, 20 April 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 1.
231
HDC leadership body vowed to work with trade unions and the Democratic Party, to
local groups, NCPAC and the new New York-based group, Independent Voters
Committee of Arts and Sciences. In addition to numerous national priorities, they support
Joseph Aidlin as a replacement for new Congressmen Ned Healey and searched for a
replacement for Gordon MacDonough on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
They worked with other groups to arrange a meeting with MacDonough to press the
liberal Republican to live up to his commitments now that he had been elected to
Congress. And they sought to draw up program for state legislature and campaign for it
throughout state as well as working for a unicameral legislature because the State Senate
was so badly malapportioned. Although the group planned a massive membership
meeting, the emphasis was on holding Congress accountable and making an impact
through investigations of media corruption and the initiation of a huge radio and publicity
program.
410

The dilemma of how to structure local organizing continued to bedevil the HDC
into early 1945. The division of labor between the Beverly-Westwood Committee and the
HDC as a whole remained sufficiently confused as to necessitate several meetings to
bring clarity to the relationship. The latest resolution of the problem was to define the
Beverly-Westwood group as “a local committee whose function it is to mobilize political
action in its area” and to define the HDC as “not a local committee” which draws its
membership from various cultural fields and does national work. In practical terms, this

410
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 14 November 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6. Minutes of
the HDC Executive Board, 27 November 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
232
meant that the HDC would turn over members in the Beverly-Westwood area to the local
group, except when they had actively participated with the HDC and/or worked in the
entertainment industry. The HDC would not approach people in the Beverly-Westwood
area unless they belonged to one of the HDC’s cultural fields. The board members of
both groups would meet each other and the organizations would direct members to other
when appropriate. The HDC would keep 80% of the proceeds from on-going fundraising
campaign and the Beverly-Westwood Committee would receive the remaining 20%. In
local house parties, the proportions would be reversed. And credit for funds contributed
to candidates in the area would go to both groups equally.
411

In the heady early months of the HDC’s existence, the group had argued for
locally-grounded organizing to affect national politics, which in theory would trickle
down to alter local level policies. Two years later, State Assemblyman from the 57
th

District and HIC member Albert Dekker refuted the logic of trickle-down policy change.
Lower levels of government mattered on their own terms; they could even thwart the
great changes stemming from higher levels of government.
In fact, in the Hollywood Independent, Dekker argued “Until the average citizen
concerns himself with local and state government he cannot hope to understand the
political affairs of our national capitol and the capitols of the United Nations.” Of his own
state, he wrote the “California Capitol is still in the hands of the mighty few who control
their puppets with their purposes.” A major obstacle was the malapportionment of the
State Senate: Los Angeles County with 38% of the population had only one senator to

411
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 28 February 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6, p. 4.
233
represent its populace. But even in the Assembly, legislation to “actually punish
discriminators and establish fair employment practices” failed miserably. Nor did
Governor Warren’s substitute bill to establish another race relations commission win a
majority.
412

The group’s relationship to neighborhood organizing changed again in the fall of
1945 because of its affiliation with the now-national Independent Citizens Committees of
the Arts, Sciences and Profession (ICCASP), and the rapid development of the National
Citizens Political Action Committee (NCPAC). The former pulled the group toward a
focus on change through culture in general, while the NCPAC was principally intended to
organize locally, district by district. Plus, the HDC and NCPAC in L.A. had clashed
repeatedly over event planning, the distribution of fundraising proceeds, and who would
take the lead on local political races since NCPAC’s emergence in summer 1944.
In October 1945, the HICCASP and L.A. NCPAC reached agreement on how to
divide the labor of progressive politics in a complementary fashion. HICCASP agreed to
restrict mass membership campaigns to people in the arts, sciences, and professions and
especially workers through the motion picture and radio industries. NCPAC agreed to
“organize the unorganized”--the outlying communities where no community organization
exists and in those neighborhoods and communities in which already existing
organizations asked them to assist. Both groups would welcome as members anyone who
agreed with their program, but both promised to avoid competing with each other and

412
Hollywood Independent, August 1945, Vol. 1 No. 1 Aug 45, HDC Records, Box 4, Folder 1, p. 7. This
newsletter was published by the HDC under its new name: the Hollywood Independent Citizens
Committee.
234
other existing groups generally. In particular, HICCASP and NCPAC set out guidelines
for mutually beneficial cooperation between the two groups. Staff would remain in close
contact and two members of each organizations board would sit on the other’s board.
Endorsements, publicity, and for collaborative fundraising, revenues would be
apportioned in advance. HICCASP would prepare pamphlets, leaflets, radio platters,
sketches, etc and furnish them to NCPAC for wider distribution. And if agendas
converge, HICCASP would aid NCPAC’s staging of mass meetings.
413

Despite this distribution of responsibilities, the Hollywood Independent Citizens
Committee remained intimately involved in local organizing efforts. In April 1946, after
hearing about the circulation of restrictive covenants throughout Beverly Hills, the
HICCASP leadership resolved to coordinate actions with the Beverly-Westwood Citizens
Committee to oppose this wave of racial discrimination. In the summer, HICC staff set up
tables at popular L.A. area shopping centers with supplies such as telegram blanks,
petitions and the like to allow citizens to urge Congress to renew the OPA.
414
Film stars
manned tables at the Las Palmas Theatre and Schwabs drugstore, while the Women’s
Division coordinated a local telephone campaign. On July 18, the organization took part
in the Buyers Strike organized by the Coordinating Council of Civic and Labor Groups,
including a “picket line of starlets.” Stars loaned money to enable radio announcements
(425 spots in total) and the idea of using an airplane equipped with a loudspeaker was

413
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 25 October 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6, pp. 1-2;
Minutes of the Interim Committee, 20 November 1945, Dore Schary Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society,
Box 101, Folder 2; George Pepper, Report on The failure to organize the arts, sciences and professions.”
414
Minutes of the Executive Council, 10 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
235
floated.
415
Engagement in the L.A. Citizens Housing Council and the Consumer Tenant-
League continued.
416

Moreover, the HICCASP continued to intervene in Southern California-area
elections, even more aggressively than in the years prior. In March 1946, the group
drafted Reuben Borough to run for Congress in the Hinshaw’s 20
th
District, as a matter
“of principle not for the purpose of expediency.” Endorsements were issued for a long
slate of congressional candidates and then, in early signs of Cold War dissension, the
leadership bickered over whether to draw endorsements from local Congressmen such as
Jerry Voorhis who had condemned Soviet actions (although they ultimately refrained
from withdrawing any endorsements). Before the primary elections, HICCASP broadcast
eleven radio spots for the slate headed by Gubernatorial candidate Kenny. There were an
additional eleven broadcasts for Ellis Patterson in his primary race against Will Rogers,
Jr., a sign of the newfound dominance of the group’s Communist-aligned faction.
417

While HICCASP contributed its leading lights to political work around the
country (from Cleveland and Denver to Seattle, Chicago, Washington DC, and within
California to San Diego and Bakersfield), the majority of celebrity interventions were in
Los Angeles, with seven major rallies and five smaller events.
418
Lena Horne and Earl

415
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 53;
Minutes of the Executive Board, 16 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8.
416
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 49.
417
“List of HICCASP Broadcasts for Kenny and slate,” 10 June 1946, HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 16;
Minutes of the Executive Council, 18 March 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.; Minutes of the
Executive Council, 2 April 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
418
HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 14
236
Robinson rallied people at both the L.A. High School downtown and in the 48
th
AD for
Borough and the rest of the slate. John B. Hughes appeared at Santa Monica High School,
while Al Dekker led a rally at El Rodeo High School in Beverly Hills.
For the primary elections, the HICCASP entered in an informal coordinating
council with the NCPAC, the Railroad Brotherhoods, the L.A. CIO and the Progressive
AFL. After the “almost disastrous defeat” with Kenny’s loss in the primaries and the
weak showing of other Democrats, the groups resolved to strengthen a joint campaign
strategy. The groups split the $1,000 cost of hiring a paid organizer and decided to call
together their respective memberships on a district basis. The HICCASP would take
responsibility for organizing in the Assembly Districts where its membership was
concentrated: 42
th
AD in the 20
th
CD, the 56
th
AD in CD 13, the 57
th
AD in 15
th
CD, and
the 59
th
and 60
th
AD in the 16
th
CD.
419
The HICCASP also directed major resources to
bolstering the campaign for a FEPC ballot initiative. In addition to providing the salary
for the campaign’s PR man, the radio division and the pamphlet/publications committee
worked to produce materials in support of the campaign for statewide distribution.
420

Ambiguous Constituencies
The Hollywood committee’s rapidly changing relationship to ICCASP and NCPAC both
camouflaged and reflected difficulties in HICCASP’s Southern California-based

419
Legislative Director of HICCASP, “Report of Campaign Activities to be submitted to the New York
office,” 3 September 1946, HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 11; Minutes of the Executive Council, 27 August
1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8.
420
Minutes of the Executive Council, 11 June 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8.
237
organization in the months and years after the monumental success of the 1944 election.
In particular, the organization remained plagued by inconsistency, ambivalence and
ambiguity on where its main constituency lay. Whereas in January of 1945 it had
resolved to concentrate on a unique constituency in the motion picture industry, the
group’s affiliation with ICC led it enlarge its focus to all those in the arts, sciences, and
professions. In the summer of 1945, the HICC opened its membership to all people and
resolved to add two or three new people to the Executive Council who were not from the
arts, sciences, and professions at all, in order to forge stronger ties with other local
progressive groups.
421
By November, Executive Director Pepper was harshly lamenting
to the HICC’s assembled leadership that he had failed to organize in the arts, sciences,
and professions outside of the motion picture industry. HICC was “still too much a
Hollywood organization,” he contended, and increased representation among the elected
leadership of scientists, educators and other culture-shapers was imperative. His self-
criticism, however harsh, overlooked the weakness induced from the precipitous shifts in
organizing focus. Indeed, as he had reported, the Music Division (under the new
leadership of Johnny Green) and Radio Division were doing excellent work. On one
hand, he reported that the addition of field organizer and membership director would go
along way toward sharing the workload and enabling sustained organizing outside the
motion picture. But on the other hand, he excoriated the group’s elected leadership—the

421
Minutes of the Executive Council, 13 July 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 7.
238
Executive Committee, Executive Board and Executive Council—for their inactivity and
failure to help work through the organization’s problems.
422

Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It: The Perennial Problem of the Democratic
Party
In addition to the conundrums of scale and constituency, there was another
unresolved, perennially surfacing tension at the heart of the HDC’s mission and work: its
relationship to the Democratic Party. A problem for progressives across the U.S., the
question was ironically complicated in California, and Los Angeles in particular, by the
fact that progressives had played a major role in the party’s rapid growth during the
1930s and held influential positions in its leadership, from the L.A. County Central
Committee to Governor Olson and Attorney-General Robert Kenny. Previously, the
Motion Picture Democratic Committee had struggled with the same issues. Strongly
oriented to Culbert Olson’s campaign to bring a “New Deal to California,” as well as to
extend the New Deal nationally, the MPDC had not formally affiliated with the
Democratic Party. Yet coordination was always close and its leading light—Melvyn
Douglas—specifically envisioned MPDC’s task as working within the Democratic Party
to support the New Deal and its expansion. If the 1939 Pact irrevocably undermined the

422
Minutes of the Interim Committee, 20 November 1945, Schary Papers, Box 101, Folder 2; Minutes of
the HDC Executive Board, 24 August 1945, HDC Records Box 1, Folder 7. The Special Legislative
Committee led by Reuben Borough recommended endorsement and active support of ten bills for full
employment, fair labor standards, unemployment compensation, social security, maternal and child
welfare, federal development and conservation of power and other natural resources in the Missouri and
Columbia valleys, fair employment practices, abolition of the poll tax, scientific research and development
and public housing.
239
MPDC, the decisive mechanism for the break came when the Communist-aligned faction
turned against Roosevelt’s policies and his candidacy for a third term. This split pushed
the non-Communist aligned FDR supporters to create a more ad hoc grouping,
Hollywood for Roosevelt, that worked directly with and under the Democratic National
Committee to bring the unique talents and considerable resources of the film community
to bear on national politics.
An ad hoc group of Hollywood progressives formed again as a last ditch effort to
bolster the second, flailing gubernatorial campaign of Culbert Olson during the fall of
1942. When the participants decided to institutionalize this effort on a permanent basis,
they encountered the same partisan dilemma that their predecessors had after the 1938
campaign. It was one thing to wholeheartedly support the relatively progressive leader of
the Democratic ticket; it was another to affiliate with the Democratic Party as whole.
423

Yet in California, and its southern half especially, the Democratic Party had
absorbed progressives from their previous home in the Republican and Socialist parties.
If progressives anywhere should have felt comfortable in formally affiliating with the
Democratic Party, it should have been in Los Angeles. And indeed, progressives,
including the HDC, did work to build to the Democratic Party and to mold it into a
progressive vehicle. But there remained a deep-seated reluctance to become part of the
Democratic Party proper. Progressives’ embrace remained provisional.

423
In New York and in many other parts of the country, the Democratic Party was clearly not the “natural”
home for progressive forces. In some places, such as parts of the Midwest, the Republican Party had long
been a vehicle for progressives. In other states, there were significant third-party efforts to forward
progressive goals.
240
Part of this hesitance might be attributable to the influence of Communists, who,
even in their Popular Front period, wished to maintain nominally independent progressive
organizations over which they could exert influence through their disproportionate
discipline and time commitment. Although there is something to be said for this notion,
it is far from complete as an explanation. Secret Communists worked in the ranks of
California Democratic Party (Ellenore Bogigian Abowitz served on the state central
committee and later as an aide to state Democratic Party Chairman James Roosevelt), and
in FDR’s New Deal administration.
424

Conversely, non-Communists were often at the front of efforts to prevent
affiliation with the Democratic Party. In New York, the American Labor Party existed in
large part because former Socialists were allergic to the perceived corruption of the
Democratic Party. If the California Democratic Party did not have the taint of Tammany
Hall and an urban machine culture, it nonetheless retained influential leaders—state
legislator and Policy Committee chair Alfred Robertson, DNC Treasurer Edwin Pauley,
and long-standing Angeleno eminence John Elliot—who antagonized liberals. Even more
importantly, progressives in California viewed the national Democratic Party with some
trepidation. Its shift to New Deal liberal positions under Roosevelt seemed entirely
provisional. Urban machine bosses on one hand, and Southern representatives of Jim
Crow, on the other, seemed to hold crucial levers of power. Progressives’ ambivalent and

424
On Ellenore Bogigian Abowitz, see Healey and Isserman, California Red, 77. On the national level, take
the example of senior financial official Harry Dexter White, according to the extant evidence, passed along
information to the Soviet Government. See Benn Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard
Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2013) 4, 23.
241
quite realistic view of the Democratic Party, however, became a self-fulfilling prophecy,
at least in the medium-term. The way the party was served to blind them to the ways in
which it could become what they thought it ought to be.
A cross-era comparison is instructive. For all their antipathy to their party’s
moderate Northeast-based leadership, the Goldwater Republicans of the 1960s did not
turn away from their drive to capture the Party and steer it in their own direction. In
contrast, progressives fatalistically accepted the Democratic Party as beyond repair and
thus prevented themselves from exercising control over it throughout their most powerful
years. And then most damagingly, they left the Democratic Party in 1948, which
weakened their cause and defeated their hopes that the Democratic Party would serve as a
vehicle for their vision
In the wake of Culbert Olson’s loss in 1942 and what the HDC termed “the
disintegration of the Democratic Party in California after the November elections,” the
newly formed HDC assessed the possibilities for a progressive resurgence. Seeing that
the “Republican Party dominated by the Hoover-Hearst apparatus is the only strong
political force in the state,” and the HDC Executive Board members reasoned that “the
Democratic Party is the only force that can balance this situation by organizing
progressive forces throughout the state.” Despite their reluctance to directly affiliate, the
HDC recognized the integrating power and encompassing authority unique to the
Democratic Party. Because of this conviction, HDC members felt that their own
organization “could do much toward rallying the best elements within the Democratic
Party around Robert Kenny, who appears to be the natural leader.”
242
In May 1943, the Board appointed a three person committee to explore “what
possibilities now exist for helping to build the liberal forces in California into an active,
functioning Democratic Party,” led by Morris Cohn and including Gloria Stuart and
Norval Crutcher. Yet in spite of the importance they placed on creating an effective and
progressive Democratic leadership and their own commitment as an organization to that
goal, the Board members still held to the notion that the HDC could go down this path
“without losing its identity or becoming a patsy of the Democratic Party.”
If on one level, these contradictory sentiments were understandable, on another
level, they were absurd and counterproductive. Despite the overwhelming importance
attached to developing an effective Democratic Party as the coordinator and spearhead of
progressive forces, the HDC reasoning emphasized the fear of losing its identity to the
Party rather than seeking to co-opt it entirely. In other words, they feared losing their
independence as institutionally autonomous, nominally non-partisan progressives more
than they hoped to co-opt the Democratic Party and remake its identity in their own
image.
425

When the HDC’s liaison committee met with Kenny, CA Attorney general and
the state’s leading progressive and top Democrat, he told them, quite remarkably, that the
HDC was the “only organized group working effectively for Democratic aims in
California.” He thought that they could spearhead the re-making of the state’s
Democratic Party and offered his active assistance to that end. With his backing, the
HDC proceeded to mail letters to nearly a dozen progressive organizations with the aim

425
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 4 May 1943, HDC Records Box 1, Folder 6, p. 1.
243
of holding a Los Angeles legislative conference, which would ask all of the Congressmen
home on vacation to report on their activities.
426
Over the summer and early fall of 1943,
the HDC leadership churned with discussions of possible ways to redirect the Democratic
Party along a more favorable path.
At the August 1943 Board Meeting, Executive Director Pepper suggested a three-
part plan of activity: 1); HDC delegations to congressmen; 2) stimulation of legislative
councils throughout area; 3) stimulation of activity directed toward development of the
Radio program.
427
HDC volunteer leaders and members of Democratic State Central
Committee, Ellenore Bogigian Abowitz and Joe Aidlin, outlined the organization and
function of the state’s Democratic Party structure. Given how progressive the 1942
platform was, Abowitz reasoned, the most important task was to endorse candidates
before the Democratic primaries and build a critical mass of support behind the
progressive ones in each case. The HDC would be most effective, she contended, if it
concentrated its efforts in the places where members of the motion picture industry
resided. The HDC should begin its work by searching out good candidates for relevant
primaries.
428

Aidlin explained that there were approximately twenty local Democratic clubs
affiliated to the L.A. County Democratic Committee and that they made endorsements in

426
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 7 July 1943, HDC Records Box 1, Folder 6.
427
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [comprehensive version], 4 August 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6.
428
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
244
the primaries. There was public interest in further participation, he sensed, and the State
Democratic Committee seemed poised to begin organizing Democratic coordinating
committees for each congressional district. Aidlin suggested moving from the idea of
local district organizations composed of representatives from various progressive groups
and toward organizing all Democrats willing to work within each congressional district
into a single organization. The group would be open to all members of the voting public
as well as members of various organizations, in order to involve as many people as
possible. Under this all-encompassing and unified district group, sub-groups would form
by industry and by their functional campaign purpose. The HDC, in Aidlin’s vision,
would submerge its membership into the official Democratic groups in order to
accomplish its progressive aims. In his view, channeling it efforts this way would allow it
to “influence the entire district” because it was “sufficiently large to carry a tremendous
amount of weight.” If the HDC was indeed prepared to work through the Democratic
Party, it should create a liaison committee to cooperate with the county and state
committees.
Aidlin’s vision was a powerful one, yet in its cooperative stance toward the
existing hierarchy of the Democratic Party, it blunted progressive ambition to change the
party and lessened the institutional leverage to do so. The extent of this strategic
concession likely contributed to other HDC leaders’ reluctance to work entirely within
the Democratic Party. Louis Harris reiterated the independent position by stressing the
245
on-going labor of the liaison committee to cooperate with rather than affiliate to the
Democratic Party.
429

The September 8, 1943 meeting featured a new permutation of plans to organize
vis-à-vis the Democratic Party. Pepper outlined a complicated, three prong initiative 1) to
form mass non-partisan groups for precinct work and active political work; 2) to develop
legislative councils, such as the one in the 20
th
Congressional District as a non-partisan
group, composed of delegates from bigger progressive organizations already committed
to a basic, common program; and 3) to foster new official Democratic clubs of about
twenty-five members each for the sole purpose of taking positions for and against
candidates and legislation. Board members stressed the importance of asking the
Democratic County Central Committee to stimulate the creation of new Democratic clubs
and the need to reach out to civic groups such as the League of Women Voters. In
addition to mailing this plan to many leaders in the Democratic Party, the HDC was
already participating in the development of a legislative council for the Hollywood area,
which encompassed a broad variety of organizations, and was joining with other groups
to persuade Southern California Congressmen with poor voting records to change their
positions.
430

By the middle of October, Don King reported that the Liaison Committee had
abandoned the HDC’s grand ambition to initiate a state-wide legislative conference.

429
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [comprehensive version], 4 August 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6.
430
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 8 September 1943, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6, pp. 1-2
246
Instead, the HDC would work with the CIO, AFL and other progressive groups to create
slates for the Democratic County Central Committee in Congressional Districts 15, 16,
and 20 where its membership was concentrated.
431
Oscar Fuss, CIO Legislative Director
(and a Communist Party member) concurred strongly that there was little purpose to a
state-wide legislative conference; organizing at the scale of assembly districts was most
needed.
There were extensive disagreements, however, over the proper scope of the
HDC’s work and its relationship to pushing the Democratic Party statewide to adhere to a
progressive line. In particular, many HDC leaders were frustrated by Senator Downey’s
recent positioning and “defeatist and disruptionist” speech in which he claimed the war
would be over within four months. Fuss warned that if the HDC took the position that
Downey “is as dead as a doornail” it would split the Democratic Party. Given Downey’s
relatively progressive background, Fuss said, progressives should articulate an attitude of
“sorrow not anger.” Attacks on Downey and his defeat in primary would leave no ready
Democratic replacement and would only lead to Republican victory. Louis Harris agreed
that snap judgments endangered the all-important unity of labor, liberals, and the
Democratic Party, but that it was up to the HDC to unite Democrats around the FDR
program, especially given the lack of initiative on this front by Kenny. Fuss countered
that the HDC should stick to working among its own membership; if a quarter million
CIO members, the AFL, and other progressive groups had “not yet succeeded in
clarifying the Democratic Party,” the HDC would have little chance of doing so. The

431
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6, p. 1.
247
HDC leaders remained reluctant, nonetheless, to wait for labor to coalesce around a
program and action plan.
432

HDC leaders agreed with Fuss’s emphasis on the organization’s local organizing
efforts, but also felt strongly that “its influence can be and is much wider than its
membership.” Morris Cohen, for instance, said that while district, city, county and state
level politics were important, often times only broad national and international issues
drew the interest of HDC members and the voting public. Sue Rosen, of the Beverly-
Westwood group, noted pointedly that local affairs had never been the group’s main
focus. Pepper reaffirmed the membership’s lack of focus interested on local issues and
campaigns, but sought to minimize the conflict and downplay any contradiction between
the HDC’s quite local base and its wider aspirations in the political system. On one hand,
the Democratic National Committee had vocally appreciated the HDC’s work to support
the President through the cultural talents and appeal unique to its membership. On the
other hand, Pepper noted, the HDC’s office had stimulated and coordinated
neighborhood-based work that was necessary to reach voters door-to-door on the pressing
issues of the day.
433

Despite the mutually supportive arrangement between the HDC and the DNC,
tensions developed over whether to prioritize support for Democrats or for progressive
policies. Thanking the Executive Vice Chairman of the DNC, Ambrose O’Connell, in

432
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [comprehensive version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6, pp. 2-3.
433
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board [comprehensive version], 13 October 1943, HDC Records, Box 1,
Folder 6, p. 4.
248
October 1943 for his letter of encouragement, the HDC’s Pepper reiterated their
opposition to “all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, who consistently refuse to
back our Commander-in-Chief. We make this statement, without reservation, because our
President’s program clearly points to the speedy and unconditional surrender of the Axis
and the securing of freedom and opportunity for all peoples.”
434

The HDC continued to debate its relationship to the Democratic Party into the
winter months. As John Howard Lawson (a leading Communist) put it, the HDC wanted
to help improve the organization and functioning of the Democratic Party, on the
condition that its platform follow progressive principles. Again the emphasis was not on
co-opting the Democratic Party, but treating it, fatalistically as something the HDC could
not potentially change.
435
At the December 1943 meeting, after receiving an update on
Kenny’s suggestion for new forms of party organization, including a state Democratic
Policy Committee chaired by Alfred Robertson, the Executive Board launched into
another lengthy ambivalent, contradiction-filled discussion of how HDC could be most
effective. Given the upcoming elections for the County Central Committee, the HDC
would need to act quietly if it wanted to make an impact. There were clear differences of
opinion among the leadership, but the consensus position was a muddled commitment to
continue the strategy of “working within” and not trying to “organize a non-partisan
group that merely sits by” and yet to also refrain from joining the Democratic Party.

434
George Pepper for HDC to Ambrose O’Connell, Executive Vice Chairman of the DNC, 11 October
1943, HDC Records, Box 2, Folder 20.
435
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 17 November 1943, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
249
Norval Crutchter voiced the opinion that HDC would be stronger outside the party
than inside of it. Barbara Myers worried that if the group joined the Democratic Party, it
would lose its fiscal and policy independence. And others resisted joining the party
because they opposed, rather than supported reactionary Democrats such Jack Tenney
and John Costello. In contrast, Nat Perrin stressed the need to continue working within
the Democratic Party. Only by organizing Democratic clubs would it be possible to
bolster progressive policies and defeat conservative Democrats at every level of
government. Those wary of working too closely with the Democratic Party agreed to a
point, but conditioned HDC’s involvement in organizing clubs “to support a policy, not a
party.”
By drawing such a distinction, they again showed the limits of their strategic
sense. The notion of supporting a party in order to co-opt it in favor of their own
principles and preferred policies never surfaced. Myers’ comments, too, betrayed a
narrow vision of how progressives might affiliate with the Democratic Party, assuming
that it would have to be on the organizational terms of the Party’s current leaders and
structure, rather than thinking creatively about how to change the party in the process.
Pepper, highly attuned to practicalities as the Executive Director, suggested several
concrete steps to cut through the theoretical debates. The HDC could assist in the
formation of a Legislative Council in the 13
th
and 15
th
Congressional Districts as well as
collaborating with other groups and the Democratic Party to ensure that Vice President
Wallace’s visit to the area was successful.
436

436
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 15 December 1943, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
250
And indeed, the HDC, in its first year of existence, had several accomplishments
in building and shaping the local Democratic Party. HDC had helped to organize local
Democratic organizations in Silver Lake and then in Pasadena. The [San Fernando]
Valley Committee and the Beverly-Westwood Committees connected to the HDC were
both active and the latter included more than 200 members. HDC had played an
important role in setting up legislative councils in various congressional districts and
integrating “white collar” progressives with those from organized labor. When
Democratic leaders Robert Kenny and Alfred Robertson spoke to the assembled members
of HDC at a January 1944 general meeting, they explained and praised the group’s past
and potential contributions to building the Democratic Party. Robertson acknowledged
the HDC’s power as an independent unit to make progress toward the objectives of the
California Democratic platform. By registering voters, publicizing the party’s platform,
and joining assembly district organizations, the HDC members, he contended, would
contribute immensely. In response to a member concern that the HDC’s non-partisan
stance precluded involvement in Democratic clubs, Kenny urged HDC members to
participate as individuals, to be “the yeast that will make those clubs rise.”
437

In early 1944, the HDC took full charge of Vice President’s February 4 visit to
L.A., at the request of the sponsoring organization, the Kenny-helmed United Citizens’
Committee. The group began to work with the Democratic Party in forming campaign
committees for each Congressional District and worked with labor and the Democrats to

437
Minutes of Membership Meeting, 12 January 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 9.
251
agree upon a top to bottom slate. The HDC printed five thousand copies of the
Democratic platform and mapped its membership down to the precinct level.
438

Despite the intimate and on-going cooperation with the Democratic Party, the
HDC insisted on maintaining the pretense of nonpartisanship and bipartisanship. It
articulated its support for FDR’s program and the California Democratic Party, yet
somewhat absurdly stressed its openness to the participation of Republicans. More
reasonably, the HDC blanched at efforts by the Democratic National Committee,
represented by its Treasurer Edwin Pauley, to share all or part of the funds the HDC had
raised. The DNC ostensibly wanted to “avoid duplication of effort within the industry”
but HDC’s leadership was wise to the power and principles at play. The HDC offered to
cooperate on mass meetings with figures such as Wallace and Truman and to split funds
raised on a percentage basis.
439

This tension did not substantially inhibit the productive day-to-day relationship
between the HDC and the Democratic Party efforts in California. Only weeks later,
participants to the California Democratic Party’s August convention enthusiastically
reported that its platform was “one of the finest programs the country has ever seen, with
no sign of disunity.” After a meeting with statewide leader Pauley and L.A. County
leader Michael D. Fanning, HDC agreed to send two delegates to the Democratic County
Committee, three to the State Committee, and two to the National Committee.
Democratic candidates from Northern California wholeheartedly welcomed the offer of

438
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 19 January 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
439
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 11 August 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6.
252
HDC help. And HDC joined the Coordinating Committee for the Democratic Campaigns
in Southern California, at the invitation of Chair Fanning.
At the same time, the HDC cooperated with the newly formed Republican Negro
Committee for the Reelection of Roosevelt, led by HDC board member Rex Ingram, to
register and mobilize voters, especially recent migrants from the South.
440
And they
backed liberal Republican Gordon McDonough in the 1944 congressional race.
441

Nonetheless, contributions to and collaboration with the Democratic Party
predominated, including publication of the “Free Press” a full size, 4 page newspaper
than ran several weekly beginning September 28, with an initial run of 350,000 copies. It
was edited by combined staff of Newspaper Guild professionals, plus Hollywood writers
and cartoonists.
442
In early October, by unanimous vote of the Interim Committee, HDC
decided to contribute 20% of gross receipts of new campaign contributions to the
campaign fund of Democratic Party, for use entirely in Southern California. The funds
would be spent according to the budget Fanning had submitted. Collections would be
taken up at Truman Victory Ball, Truman Rally, and Senator Dennis Chavez Rally.
Funds raised at the businessmen’s luncheon with Harold Ickes, co-sponsored with

440
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 18 August 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6; History of the
Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 26.
441
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 30.
442
George Pepper, Exec. Secy. of HDC to Sen. Sheridan Downey c/o Mike Fanning 6 August 1944, HDC
Records, Box 3, Folder 6.
253
NCPAC would also be shared with Fanning’s Committee. To date, the HDC had already
contributed $1,000 to Fanning and it forgave a $2,000 loan, turning it into a grant.
443

After the 1944 election, HDC again re-evaluate its strategic position and its
relationship to the Democratic Party and other groups. Building a strong, “people’s
movement” was imperative, the HDC leadership felt. The strategy would be to achieve
“unity with all democratic forces including, trade unions, the National Citizens PAC, the
Democratic Party, and local citizens groups” without making formal commitments to any
group.
444
In early December, the members of the Southern California Democratic
Coordinating Committee met to determine how to build a “conscious, progressive
organization” and what form it should take. Fanning’s preference was “the looser, the
better.” A “disciplined, formal organization would not work,” he said “it would fall apart
and when the need for organization became immediate, we would be worse off than if we
had never organized. We must not try to setup a political machine.”
But there was a widespread desire, Alice Orens, reported for “a central force” that
could coordinate the diverse groups. She proposed a Continuations Committee with its
own chairman and a paid secretary “to give people some place to call.” There was a clear
division of labor already in place, Ellenore Bogigian Abowitz noted: The Democratic
Party could do precinct work, the HDC could mobilize talent and money, the NCPAC
could reach middle class, professional and business people, the NAACP could bring in
blacks and the AFL and CIO stood with blue-collar workers. Everyone agreed that the

443
Untitled document, 2 October 1944, HDC Records, Box 2, Folder 9, p. 1
444
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 14 November 1944, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 6;
254
group should emphasize issue advocacy and refrain from candidate endorsements, but
there was disagreement over whether the group should affiliate with the Democratic Party
or adopt a non-partisan stance. Despite their commitment to meet again, the Coordinating
Committee soon ceased activity.
445

Under its new name, the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of Arts,
Sciences, and Professions, the contradictory impulses to alliance with Democrats and
outreach to independents and Republics grew. At the January 1945 membership meeting,
the HICCASP passed a resolution to attract more anti-Dewey Republicans into its
ranks.
446
At the same time, however, the group coordinated efforts to build the strength of
progressive Democrats in Sacramento and worked closely with the leadership of the
national Democratic Party.
At the meeting, the group listened sympathetically to a report from Albert Dekker,
HICCASP member and newly elected Assemblyman who noted back from Sacramento
that “There is no Democratic Party in the State of California. There are barely a dozen
men here who wish to support the program of the Democratic Party as developed in
August.” According to Dekker, Democratic leaders such as Alfred Robertson claimed to
support measures that would bolster the authority of political parties but then covertly

445
History of the Hollywood Democratic Committee Self-Report, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 1, p. 32.
Minutes of Coordinating Committee Meeting, 9 December 1944, HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 2.
446
Minutes of HDC Membership Meeting, 5 January 1945, Box 1, Folder 10, HDC Records.
255
employed procedural maneuvers to undercut these measures in the legislature.
447

An HICCASP delegation to Washington, D.C. met with the Chairman of the
Democratic National Committee, Robert Hannegan, who indicated that he wanted to
build a strong Democratic Party on support for progressive issues and said that if
HICCASP was to become part of a new national progressive organization, it would “help
the Democratic party, which recognizes the need for independent political action.” They
were at pains to explain to why HICCASP needed to keep much of the funds it raised
rather than turning them over to the Democratic Party directly. And they counted on
Hannegan to secure the appointment of Henry Wallace to the Cabinet.
448

When red-baiting flared up, HICCASP turning to the leadership of the
Democratic Party for reassurance and protection. In July 1945, Pepper received
assurances from Sam O’Neal, Director of Publicity for the DNC that House Speaker Sam
Rayburn would prevent HUAC from becoming a witch-hunt, and that the Committee
would operate transparently, not leaking information from investigators, but making clear
statements from the Committee as a whole once the investigation was finished.
449

And in February 1946, HICCASP sought to rebut the Hollywood Citizens’ attacks
upon it by seeking letters from Fanning and the state and national Democratic leaders that

447
Program of Recommended Legislation Presented by the HDC to The Hon. Albert Dekker CA State
Assemblyman-Elect, 5 January 1945, HDC Records, Box 2, Folder 19; Letter from Assemblymember
Dekker to “Dear George and Members of the Interim Committee,” 20 January 1945, HDC Records, Box 2,
Folder 19.
448
Minutes of the HDC Executive Board, 28 February 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 7, p. 2;
449
Sam O’Neal, Director of Publicity for DNC, to George Pepper/HICCASP, 11 July 1945, HDC Records,
Box 2, Folder 20.
256
refuted the editorial claim that there had been ‘no connection with or recognition from the
official Dem Party organization.” HICCASP had been consistently opposed to becoming
part of the Democratic Party, but now as they came under attack as a fringe group, they
sought the cover of affiliation with Democratic Party. Despite their lack of formal
affiliation, they were now heavily dependent on the good will of the Democratic Party.
450

Yet despite this precarious position, the increasingly heavy-handed Communist-aligned
faction within HICC intervened in a messy Democratic Senatorial primary, backing
Patterson over Will Rogers.
As Truman moved to the center and conservative forces re-grouped within both
major parties, the need for a unified progressive counter-attack was evident even to many
anti-communists. Driven in part by the increasingly domineering Communist-aligned
faction, independent progressive groups such as HICCASP gave up hope of reforming
the Democratic Party.
There were two, somewhat contradictory Cold War logics underpinning this turn.
The disappointment with the anti-Communist stance of the Truman administration and its
move to the center on a variety of domestic policies was one. The other, less obvious turn
was the attempt to shed the taint of Communist Party influence by projecting a multi-
party image. As the crisis over Communism and anti-Communism reached a peak in July
1946, a central recommendation of the organization’s unity committee was to stress

450
Minutes of the HDC Executive Council, 8 February 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2; Minutes
of the Executive Board, 24 August 1945, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 7. In August 1945, the group
contacted Michael Fanning to help resuscitate coordination of progressive groups in Los Angeles, which
had dissipated since Fanning’s resignation from the County Coordinating Council.
257
HICCASP’s “non-partisan stand and make greater effort to seek out liberal Republicans
and independents and give them a hearing.”
451

This about-face not only failed to achieve its objectives; it actively compounded
the problems of independent progressives. The Democratic Party had long been a source
of legitimacy and a link to the levers of governmental authority for progressives; if
difficult to sway at times, the party was an organization over which progressives had a
significant degree of influence. By distancing themselves from the Democrats,
progressives undercut this influence and their supposed attempt to bring in Republicans
and independents bore little fruit. The Democratic Party had indeed become the major
vehicle of progressive electoral aspirations throughout most of the country and the
number of progressives still in the Republican Party or entirely unaffiliated was marginal.
As those on the left nationally formed the Progressive Citizens of America in late
1946, they openly contemplated the creation of a new political party. The Republican
Party had “lost any claim to being a liberal party.” But even though the Democratic Party
had “repeatedly served the progressive cause,” they exclaimed, it had slid toward “its
own brand of ignorance and bigotry;” it was “notoriously tainted by Jim-Crow reaction
and machine greed.” The PCA’s program proclaimed “If the Democratic Party woos
privileges and betrays the people, it will die and deserve to die. We cannot, therefore, rule
out the possibility of a new political party, whose fidelity to our goals can be relied
upon.” A widely exaggerated contrast between the Democratic Party’s formerly

451
Minutes of the Policy Committee, 5 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 7, Folder 17; Brownstein, The Power
and the Glitter, 108-09; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 239.
258
progressive and currently regressive tendencies led the PCA to discount the possibility
and necessity of changing the party from within. An exaggerated sense of their own
power in the American political system (both their social base and institutionally) led
them to overestimate the ease and feasibility of developing a new political party.
At the last meeting of the HICCASP before merger into the PCA, the Executive
Council discussed the PCA’s new program with its characteristic ambivalence toward the
Democratic Party. The leadership agreed with the PCA’s analysis, but “because of the
progressive history of Democrats in California,” that they should “make clear [their]
willingness to collaborate.” There was no need, they felt, to “read in hidden meanings” to
the text. In California, if Democrats were liberal in a given situation, progressives should
continue to cooperate with them.
452

The Coming of the Cold War
As seen above, Cold War divisions had begun to ripple through HICCASP in the
early months of 1946, an issue entirely apart from merger negotiations with the national
ICCASP. Despite financial troubles, rapidly changing organization form, and an
indecisive, helter-skelter focus, the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee
remained a credible home for most of those across the progressive spectrum through the
first half of 1946. Prominent Hollywood figures continued to accept leadership of the
organization and even those who would later turn bitterly against it remained deeply
invested in its work. Although Cold War polarization was far from the only maze the

452
Minutes of the Executive Council, 7 January 1947, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2
259
organization had to navigate, it was the final and most important cause of the
HICCASP’s decline. When the organization merged with NCPAC, it brought a
considerably large membership to the marriage, but in most ways, the organization was a
shadow of its formerly formidable self. Unlike in many other Popular Front progressive
groups, the schism was forced by Communist Party (CP) directives that were both
ideologically problematic and practically short-sighed, as testimony from participants on
all sides of the dispute attests.
Tensions between U.S. and U.S.S.R foreign policy grew from 1945 onward, but
the effect on progressive organizing exploded only with a series of shifts in CP strategy.
Under orders from the Comintern, the CPUSA moved toward “independent political
action” after the purge of Earl Browder and the internal trial of noted Communist
screenwriter Albert Maltz. Although Englund and Ceplair note that the CP refrained
from return to a discourse of revolution and class-war, Party members’ increasingly
strident factionalism within progressive organizations and their uncompromising
rejection of the Democratic Party, irreparably fissured the only organizational structures
capable of exerting influence over policy and able to defend the liberties of leftists,
including Communists.
1
When the split over foreign policy widened in mid 1946, “Most
liberals and liberal organizations that did not comply with the new independent CP line
were written off as unredeemable losses or good riddances.”
453

New York, the national headquarters of the CP, followed the hardest line, given
their direct ties to Moscow and the Comintern. But the generally more flexible

453
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 237.
260
arrangements in Southern California also rigidified. Paul Cline was replaced as regional
party head by Nemmy Sparks, who ruthlessly brought all local CP branches into
conformity with the new line. Of Sparks, fellow CP activist Ellenore Bogigian Abowitz
said “He displayed nearly criminal policies toward other, non-Party organizations. It was
the first time I ever saw such direct interference in the affairs of previously allied
organizations, so many broken promises, so much rechanneling of funds. His insensitive
muscle-flexing gave the CP a bad name in a broader circle than ever before.” (Los
Angeles CP leader Dorothy Healy, who worked closely with him, said that ruthlessness
was mask for an insecure man trying to put in effect hard-line directives from New York
superiors.)
454
The Hollywood branch of ICCASP (Independent Citizens Committee of
Arts, Sciences, and Professions) suffered the brutal consequences, despite many
members’ efforts to keep the once-mighty organization strong.
The increasing stridency of CP members was occasioned not by a direct conflict
over international geopolitics or domestic policy, but over the question of whether the
organization should endorse a candidate in the Democratic Senatorial primary between
actor-politician Will Rogers, Jr. and Ellis Patterson. Patterson, although not a CP
member, had backed the party’s line as he sought re-election in 1940 as Lieutenant
Governor, turning against the re-election of FDR, while his erstwhile ally Governor
Culbert Olson remained firmly in the pro-Administration camp. In one sense, the CP’s
uncompromising decision to support Patterson’s 1946 candidate exemplified the
continuing reverberations of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, which had already once shattered

454
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 237.
261
the progressive coalition. Yet the story is a bit more complicated. It contains several
unexpected, ironic coincidences. And it encapsulates the ways in which the schism was
both globally over-determined and locally contingent.
It seems unsurprising that the Communist Party and the New Deal administration
would eventually part ways, given what happened in 1939. The events of that year were a
precedent that showed how a schism was possible, but even more importantly, it deeply
shocked non-Communists and imparted lasting skepticism about the in-authenticity and
duplicity of Communist intentions. And progressive institutions were weaker in the mid
1940s than they might have been had they not needed to re-build from the ground up after
the Pact. Nevertheless, an equally thick set of local circumstances counterbalanced the
global ramifications of the progressive polarization around Communism. Indeed, there is
no better example of the apparent comity than the relationship between Patterson and
Rogers from 1942 to 1945.
After his election to Congress in 1942, Rogers corresponded freely with open
Communists, such as Philip “Slim” Connelly, who led the L.A. CIO Council. Rogers’
missives essentially aligned with the local CIO program.
455
In the winter of 1944, Rogers
resigned from Congress to stay active in the Armed Forces. When he heard that 300
leaders of his 16
th
Congress District had met in Culver City to endorse Patterson as his
replacement, he notified the HDC that “I was tremendously hearted by this action
because Pat has long been a militant champion of liberal, democratic policies; he is an
aggressive campaigner and he can bring unity to the Democratic party in the 16
th
–a

455
Rep. Will Rogers, Jr. to Phil Connelly, 16 July 1943, HDC Records, Box 2, Folder 20.
262
fundamental necessity for victory.” In turn, the membership of the HDC had passed a
resolution backing Rogers’ continued presence in Congress.
456

When Patterson gained election in November 1944, Rogers wrote to him that “It
was a great thrill, sitting in a cold wet foxhole, to pick up a copy of the Stars and Strips
and read that you were to be my successor and the Representative of the 16
th
District of
California. I felt a glow of confidence and pride, for I know in Congress you will stand
for the thing that will benefit the many and not the few, the things that will make a third
world war less probable, a world peace more secure.”
457

In turn, by the fall of 1945, Patterson wrote to George Pepper that Rogers had
expressed interest in running for the same Congressional seat. Patterson felt that “he is
entitled to the job. I filled the seat for him while he was serving in the Armed Forces and
feel now that I should step out to allow him to fill the office again.” Instead, Patterson
contemplated retiring or entering the 1946 Senatorial contest.
458
By the beginning of
1946, however, it seemed clear that both men would run for that office, and quite
possibly Helen Gahagan Douglas or James Roosevelt would as well.
459
Patterson was
running at the urging of the local CP leadership, who had long manipulated his vanity,
insecurity and opportunistic ambition for their own purposes. Policy disagreements

456
Will Rogers, Jr. to HDC, 26 February 1944, HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 8.
457
Will Rogers, Jr. to Ellis Patterson, 20 November 1944, HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 15.
458
Ellis Patterson to George Pepper, 15 October 1945, HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 15.
459
Minutes of the Executive Council, 8 February 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
263
between the men were minor compared to the CP’s scorched earthed tactics in pursuing
its objectives.
460

As early as February 1946, Communists on the staff and board of HICCASP
vociferously lobbied for the organization to endorse Patterson, in large part due to
directives from the Southern California CP hierarchy. Communists generated ill-will, in
part, by cynically and dishonestly suggesting that the endorsement of Patterson owed to
the need to quickly consolidate a Democratic slate, and prevent a “three cornered fight
between Will Rogers, Helen G. Douglas, and Patterson.” They wanted two of the three
possible candidates to leave the race, yet they had already determined that Patterson
should stay. They framed their stance as the representative of “all liberal forces” in the
battle for a truly representative State Chairman of Democratic Party – from Southern
California – and not Robertson.” Liberal and progressive forces indeed faced a challenge
in the leadership of Alfred Robertson, but by purporting to speak with a unified
progressive voice when progressives were actually badly fractured, the Communist
faction helped to weaken the progressive voice and to sidetrack it from actual struggles
against the conservative leadership of the Democratic Party.
461
When Ellenore Bogigian
Abowitz, the Legislative Director, informed the Board that “organized progressive
support for Patterson was growing daily” she contributed to the intellectually dishonest
claim that there was a broad, deep front of support for the Patterson.
462

460
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 238.
461
Minutes of the Executive Council, 8 February 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
462
Minutes of the Executive Council, 26 February 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
264
Initially, in early February, the HICCASP’s executive leadership rejected the CP-
swayed Campaign Committee’s recommendation to endorse Patterson and collaborate
with other progressive organizations to pressure other candidates to withdraw.
463
Non-
Communist Edmund Cooke headed a subcommittee to interview Senatorial candidates
and two weeks later he reported that Rogers refused to contemplate withdrawing, while
Robert Kenny refused to run for Governor unless all forces were unified behind a single
slate.
464

Nearly all the non-Communists and many of the Communists who led HICCASP
were concerned that making any endorsement would fatally split the organization. Dore
Schary and others pleaded with the Communist board members to refrain from backing
either candidate, but newly installed Southern California CP head Nemmy Sparks
thwarted this unity position. He threatened to severely discipline any CP member in
HICCASP who sought to deviate from the party line by reaching any sort of compromise
and ordered Board members to force an endorsement vote. In a “tense and emotional”
board meeting in late February, HICCASP backed Patterson. As ex-CP member Ellenore
Bogigian Abowitz later recalled, “The Communists won the vote but lost the
organization. It created a bitterness within HICCASP heretofore unknown.”
465

463
Minutes of the Executive Council, 8 February 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
464
Minutes of the Executive Council, 26 February 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
465
Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 238. Minutes of the Executive Council, 26 February
1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 3.
265
The Campaign Committee recommended that HICCASP rescind its endorsements
from Representative Jerry Voorhis in CD12 and Representative Cecil King in CD17
because of their active opposition to Communism and the Soviet Union, which was
characterized as their “recent failure to support fully various progressive measures.”
466

The broader Executive Council, however, rejected these recommendations. By taking this
hard-line and driving through their positions without regard for democratic deliberation,
the Communist faction led the non-Communists to resurrect the bitter memories and
recriminations of the post-Pact period. An ad hoc group, the Democratic Victory
Committee, put out a flier “WHO HOAXED HICCASP,” alleging that multiple
candidates for the position had not been interviewed and citing Patterson’s anti-war, anti-
FDR statements in 1940.
467

Despite the Patterson endorsement, the direction of HICCASP remained subject
to struggle and debate. In April 1946, 33 of the 42 people nominated for the
organization’s leadership council were elected. The composition remained a mixture of
Communists, anti-Communists, and non-aligned progressives. Chairman Cromwell was
in the first category, Treasurer Pascal in the second and Secretary Yip Harburg in the
third.
468
Vice Chairmen included Dr. Linus Pauling, Lena Horne, Professor Franklin
Fearing, Col. Evans Carlson, Olivia de Haviland, Dore Schary, and Frank Sinatra. To
grapple with increasing division sowed by the Communist fraction’s stridency, the

466
Minutes of the Executive Council, 2 April 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
467
Flier, “WHO HOAXED HICCASP,” HDC Records, Box 3, Folder 14.
468
Minutes of the Executive Council, 30 April 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, pp. 1-2.
266
Executive Board started to meet twice a week. By mid-1946, the situation was deeply
fraught. The non-Communists had begun to hold meetings on the side, as Communists
had done for some time, in order to advance a unified agenda. In June 1946, those Board
members not aligned with the CP, including Roosevelt, Rawson, Dore Schary, Johnny
Green, Ernest Pascal, and Olivia de Havilland proposed a resolution to reject communism
“as a desirable form of government for the USA” so as to put a small sliver of daylight
between the organization and the Communist Party. They desperately wanted to believe
that the Popular Front era cooperation could continue. But the Communist-aligned
majority rejected even this gesture.
469

Thus, at the July 3, 1946 meeting, a host of recently inactive members who
opposed HICCASP’s new direction, including writer Allen Rivkin and actor Ronald
Reagan attended the Executive Council meeting, seeking to sway the organization.
Chairman Cromwell, a major figure in the Hollywood branch of the CP, opened the floor
for discussion of allegations that HICCASP was “controlled by the left.” According to the
minutes (whose veracity on the matter are debatable given that they were likely written
up by the Communist faction), the discussion “revealed the feeling that although it was
recognized that the organization would always be attacked by those groups and
individuals with whom we differed, there should be some re-affirmation of the policies
and program of HICCASP which would reassure membership on this subject.” There
was unanimity, apparently, “that extreme caution must be taken to avoid falling into trap
set by reactionary forces which would like HICCASP to split its own liberal strength by

469
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 108-09; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 239.
267
attacks on members or issues. The group adopted a resolution introduced by James
Roosevelt to endorse the preamble of the American Veterans Committee, a Popular Front
liberal group undergoing similar struggles. And In the hopes of moving forward, the
board appointed a seven-member unity committee to craft a policy statement behind
which the all factions could stand. Nonetheless, Edwin Knopf resigned right then and
there, due to his unhappiness with the organization and Howard Green relayed the
message that Ed Blum had resigned for similar reasons.
470

On the ad hoc Policy Committee, Ronald Reagan and Don Hartman represented
the increasingly anti-Communist moderate progressives, Dalton Trumo and John Howard
Lawson appeared on behalf of the Communists, and Linus Pauling and James Roosevelt
spoke for the non-Communist progressives. Impartial radio writer True Boardman
chaired three days and nights of meetings at Roosevelt’s home. The group recommended
that the Policy Committee remain in existence and continue discussing HICCASP’s
relationship to other progressive organizations, especially the so-called “Big Five” at its
future meetings. To make the HICCASP’s overall governance more transparent, the
seven recommend that an Agenda Committee should be formed and to improve its public
image, they urged HICCASP to redouble its efforts to reach out to liberal Republicans
and independents.
471
Finally and most importantly, they produced a policy statement
with the awkward title “Your Future Is in Your Hands Now!” (For unclear reasons,

470
Minutes of the Executive Council, 3 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8; Brownstein, The Power
and the Glitter, 108-09; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 239.
471
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 108-09; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 239.
Minutes of the Policy Committee, 5 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 7, Folder 17.
268
Reagan and Hartman contributed very little to the document.) The manifesto returned to
the essentials of HDC’s early platform. Appealing to the ideals of FDR and to the shared
goals of internationalism, racial equality, and the struggle against rightist reaction, it
urged people to rally around the HICCASP banner, not as members of the Democratic,
Republican or Communist Party.
472

When the Policy Statement was presented at the July 10 Executive Council
meeting, the reception was surprisingly favorable. Several amendments were introduced
and approved across factional lines. Mrs. Vorhaus proposed the statement include support
for the “four freedoms” and add “sex” to “freedom from discrimination on the basis of
race, color, or creed,” which Communist Dalton Trumbo seconded. Communist Ring
Lardner move to incorporate the Tehran conference statement regarding cooperation
among the Big Three powers and support their declaration that: “We shall seek the
cooperation and active participation of all nations, large and small, whose people in heart
and mind are dedicated, as are our own people, to the elimination of tyranny and slavery,
oppression and intolerance. We welcome them as they may choose to come into the
world family of democratic nations.” Anti-communist Olivia de Haviland then seconded
this measure. The meeting concluded with a variety of other business, including several
activities related to opposing U.S. military intervention in China.
473

472
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 108-09; Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 239.
Minutes of the Policy Committee, 5 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 7, Folder 17.
473
Minutes of the Executive Council, 10 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8.
269
Nonetheless, at the July 23, 1946 Executive Board meeting, the resignations on
non-Communist HICCASP leaders began to pour in. Olivia de Haviland, Joan Fontaine,
William Dozier, Howard Green and James Roosevelt submitted theirs. Ernest Pascal’s
resignation as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was tabled. The latter two
men indicated they still supported the organization, but that other organizational
commitments prevented them from serving as active leaders.
474
At the July 30, Executive
Council meeting, True Boardman presented the final draft of the Policy Statement, which
the Council accepted in its entirety except for the preamble.
475
The statement was no
longer expected to stem the flood of resignations from leaders unhappy with the
Communist faction’s influence. The departed leadership felt that the rhetoric of
progressive unity and general non-partisanship was a sham, given the unnecessarily
divisive endorsements the Communist faction had pushed HICCASP to make.
At the August 6 Board meeting, John Lawson, another prominent CP member,
moved to change the agenda of the upcoming membership meeting to strike the
announcements of resignations that would make the organization seem like a sinking
ship. Seeking to save face and retain mainstream credibility, he also wanted the
membership to have the option to adopt a resolution congratulating James Roosevelt,
who still maintained a friendly stance in public toward the organization.
476
The
organization’s remaining leadership, including future anti-Communists such as Dore

474
Minutes of the Executive Board, 23 July 1946 HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 1.
475
Minutes of the Executive Council, 30 July 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
476
Minutes of the Executive Board, 6 August 1946 HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2.
270
Schary, moved aggressively in other ways to keep it afloat, such as proposing 25 new
nominees to the Executive Council, ten to replace recently resigned leaders and fifteen
additional ones. Among the nominees were a number of prominent Hollywood stars and
leaders of HICCASP in its earlier years: Larry Adler, Averill Berman, Norval Crutcher,
Gene Kelley, Robert Kenny, Margo, Kenneth Macgowan, Groucho Marx, Jack Moss,
Vincent Price, and Gloria Stuart.
477

By August 27, producer Walter Wanger, writer Allen Rivkin, and William Wright
submitted their resignations and the Executive Council meeting was presented with a
complete list of resignations. On September 10, Johnny Green requested a leave of
absence from the Executive Board, Executive Council and Chairmanship of the Music
Division, John Hiestand resigned, and Emmet Lavery resigned from the leadership,
although reiterated his support of HICCASP’s policies and interest in participating as a
member.
478
Ronald Reagan and Bette Davis were gone as well. The total membership,
which had already declined, didn’t drop precipitously, but the organization lost its
independent image and heft.
479
Communists now obviously predominated among the
elected leadership. Important exceptions remained, however: Dore Schary, True

477
Minutes of the Executive Council, 13 August 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8.
478
Minutes of the Executive Council, 27 August 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 3; Minutes of the
Executive Council, 10 September 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2. Pascal agreed to serve on a
joint committee with NCPAC however. Roosevelt requested HICCASP’s mailing list but was turned down.
479
Brownstein, The Power and the Glitter, 108-09. Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood, 239.
271
Boardman, Rube Borough, Ed Cooke, Gregory Ain, Charles Katz, E. Y. “Yip” Harburg,
Louis Harris, Carey McWilliams, and Ernest Pascal.
480

The continuing preponderance of the Communist-aligned faction manifested itself
in debates over action for the general election. After Rogers won the Democratic
Senatorial primary, HICCASP debated whether to endorse him, even though the L.A. and
California CIO (both led by Communists) had done so. They decided, tentatively to
endorse him, but insisted on discussing and pressuring him over his stance on U.S.
foreign policy. Moreover, their fervor for Patterson continued in the form of HICCASP’s
attempts to get Patterson elected to Congress as a write-in candidate from the 16
th

District. The effort diverted scarce resources of time and money from broader campaign
efforts, and re-opened a divisive controversy. In addition to all these points, Ed Cooke,
author of the internal minority report on the matter, argued the write-in effort threatened
to spoil ballots that would otherwise be in favor of the Fair Employment Practices
Commission (FEPC), which was on the November 1946 ballot as well.
481
After the
November election, Pascal resigned and other progressives, increasingly frustrated with
the Communist-aligned faction were soon to follow. ICCASP’s merger with NCPAC to
establish the Progressive Citizens of America was imminent but the organization had
already begun to crack apart.

480
Minutes of the Executive Board, 24 September 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8.
481
Minutes of the Executive Council, 17 September 1946, HDC Records, Box 1, Folder 8, p. 2
272
CONCLUSION

When Henry Wallace ran for the Presidency on the Progressive Party ticket in
1948, his campaign represented both the endpoint of a decade and a half of grassroots
liberal organizing and a momentary diversion from a much larger much process of
mutual cooptation between grassroots liberals and the Democratic Party. As this
dissertation has shown for the first time ever, the Progressive Party was literally the
institutional descendant of every major grassroots liberal organization of the Popular
Front era. The interlocking organizational history of these institutions tells the tale. The
Progressive Party formed from the nucleus of the American Labor Party (ALP) in New
York and chapters of the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA) in states across the
county. In turn, the PCA was product of a merger between the National Citizens Political
Action Committee (NCPAC) and the Independent Citizens Committee of Arts, Sciences,
and Professions (ICCASP), both of which grew out of organizations initially established
during the 1930s. NCPAC originated on the model of the National Progressive League
for FDR (NPL), the Progressive National Committee (PNC), and the National Committee
of Independent Voters for Roosevelt (NCIVR) from its base in the industrial union
movement. ICCASP originated in the merger of the Hollywood Democratic Committee
(HDC) and the Independent Voters Committee of Artists, Writers and Scientists (ICC),
which were modeled, respectively on the Motion Picture Democratic Committee
(MPDC) and artist/intellectual constituencies of the PNC and NCIVR.
273
Yet in crucial respects, the Progressive Party was a diversion from a much longer
history of grassroots liberals experimenting with strategies for building power. The
decision to strike out from the Democratic Party actually set back the cause of grassroots
liberals’ struggle for popular legitimacy and political infrastructure. That process did not
end with the Progressive Party. Although the direct organizational history of grassroots
liberal groups clearly culminated in the Progressive Party, many of those groups’ most
important leaders broke off along the way and sought alternative vehicles to accomplish
their vision. Nationally, some joined the progressive, anti-communist Americans for
Democratic Action instead of the Progressive Citizens of America. In New York, many
left the American Labor Party for the progressive, anti-communist Liberal Party.
And soon enough, the younger generation, those born during the Great
Depression and World War II, who came of age in the late 1940s and the 1950s and who
chose to directly join the Democratic Party and transform it, locally, from the ground up,
into a liberal institution. They retained substantial continuities with earlier generations of
left-liberal movements, including the emphasis on egalitarian economic measures, racial
equality, human rights, and a just international order, notwithstanding their disdain for
Communism and their genuine hatred of the Soviet Union. They initially paid lip service
to anti-Communism but it was not among their highest priorities and they worried
majorly over its domestic effects, being more concerned about the malign intentions of
the Soviet Union internationally. By the late 1950s, despite their continuing disdain for
the U.S.S.R., they began to criticize the Cold War itself and specific U.S. foreign policies
related to it.
274
Initially in scattered district councils and clubs around Southern California, and in
“Young Democrats” groupings, and then in a full-fledged Democratic Club movement
that began to accelerate in the mid 1950s, from Southern California to New York and
beyond.
482
In Los Angeles especially, the activists of the Democratic Club movement and
to their anti-anticommunist progressive predecessors.
483
Grassroots liberal Democrats
made significant attempts to challenge racial, class and imperial inequalities, and
succeeded in capturing the Democratic Party where previous (and future) generations of
progressives had failed. In many respects, they were the heirs of the groups under study
throughout the dissertation, but those who had made their peace, at least temporarily,
with the need to work within the Democratic Party.
484

They achieved dominance within the Democratic Party by the 1970s, but the
process was slow and their victory was Pyrrhic. Forty years of struggle culminated in the
nomination of George McGovern as Democratic presidential candidate and his loss to
Richard Nixon in one of the greatest landslides in modern U.S. political history. Forty

482
In Southern California, the wholesale transformation of the Democratic Party began early—with Upton
Sinclair’s 1934 gubernatorial campaign and building upon a collection more liberal Democratic Women’s
Clubs and efforts as early as 1939, led by Glenn Anderson in the South Bay to create district-wide
Democratic Councils.
483
In many respects, they were the first cohort of the New Left, foreshadowing much of the student groups’
agenda. As such a bridge between the Old Left and the New Left, they indicate that perhaps notion was
overblown.
484
On the Democratic club movements, which built on the legacy of previous Democratic reform efforts,
third party initiatives, and independent organizing efforts, see Suleiman Osman, The Invention of
Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2011). for some of the New York story and Jonathan Bell, California Crucible:
The Forging of Modern American Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) for
some of California story. For a comparative study of Los Angeles and New York, see David Levitus,
“Democratic Club Movements in Metropolitan America,” (unpublished manuscript).
275
years of activism to transform the Democratic Party into a progressive vehicle led to a
seeming dead-end—the recalcitrance of the American voting public, circa the 1970s and
1980s. Although the wave of liberal Democrats elected to Congress post-Watergate made
their mark initially and would remain influential, grassroots liberals were never able to
gain the backing of the American voting public for their preferred Presidential candidate.
They lost the political momentum and the bully pulpit to Ronald Reagan and a succession
of conservative movements and politicians. Forty years of activism to transform the
Democratic Party into a progressive vehicle led to a seeming dead-end—the recalcitrance
of the American voting public, circa the 1970s and 1980s. New contenders for dominance
quickly surfaced within the Democratic Party, exploiting the opportunity opened by the
political losses liberals had incurred, especially the corporate-inclined Democratic
Leadership Council (DLC). For the most part, liberals and sympathetic commentators
have not wrestled with the implications of this tangled history.
Most historians have ignored this vital continuity, seeing 1948 as the great break,
whether they were sympathetic to the Communist or anti-Communist forces. Either this
moment represented the end of all that was good and true about the Popular Front era or
the beginning of a clean, “100% American” liberalism, untainted by “foreign” and
especially Communist influence. It is all too easy to fall back on the equation of
Communists with dedicated, conscientious radicalism in realms as diverse as race, class,
gender and strength of organizing, in opposition to New Deal liberals, who were and
would go on to be complicit in the perpetuation of racial inequality and especially in the
U.S.’s imperialist interventions across the world. And even recent historians have tended
276
to contrast the “anticommunist/Cold War liberalism” with the Popular Front
progressivism that dominated the 1930s and 1940s. The truth of the matter is dual—1948
was a major turning point but it was not an entirely clean start either. If we stop making
alignment on Communism and anti-Communism, the litmus test of progressivism, the
picture becomes clearer and more complicated.
Indeed, painting this complicated picture and historicizing the challenging
relationship between grassroots liberalism, progressive ideas about the nature of social
change, the structure of political institutions, and the failure to build power during the
1930s and 1940s has been the central theme of this dissertation. Many scholars have
described important many of the conundrums faced by progressives without naming the
interconnected dilemmas they faced. There has been too much emphasis on “lost
opportunities” at specific moments and not enough on an appreciation for the conjuncture
of factors that made a breakthrough nearly impossible. The progressive model was both
entirely fitting to the American political system and massively misplaced. The early
progressive model of stages of social change as decisive transformation, and the
valorization of “the American people” against “the special interests,” (and to a lesser
extent the emphasis on the importance of efficient, centralized administration) were
immensely popular notions with the American people, but they served to blind
progressive leaders on the need to actually organize in diverse communities to realize the
changes in which they so deeply believed. In contrast, civil rights organizations among
marginalized communities and religious crusaders (e.g. the prohibitionists) took nothing
for granted. They knew that the people were not so inherently virtuous they could be
277
trusted to do the right thing. And they knew social transformation was not a foregone
conclusion of historical development. It is no coincidence that activist-intellectuals such
Carey McWilliams, who was deeply involved in the intertwined struggle against race and
class exploitation in the diverse communities of Southern California was far less
complacent than many Eastern intellectuals such as Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Blindness to
matters of race, class, and imperial power led to compelling rhetoric about the wisdom of
the American people but it also led to strategic dead-ends. Belief in sweeping historical
transformation and the need for the “modernization” of government led to a focus on
building administration for the people, not building power with the people. Progressives
and liberals overwhelmingly coalesced around elections and candidates and then failed to
stay together afterwards and continue the work of widespread and intentional organizing
among diverse communities. The decision to stay engaged in such work, however, would
not have been cost-free. The patchwork of local partisan and factional alignments
generated by federal and fragmented system of the American government would have
made such work challenging. But out of short-term political calculations by leading
politicians and general trepidation, there were few sustained attempts, at least until the
1950s.
In many respects, this dissertation brings together the various pieces of the puzzle
of liberal success and failure presented by others and brings them together within a
broader intellectual framework centered on the concept of a dilemma, in which the
protagonists are thrust into a situation in which they are faced with no good options. The
dissertation explores these interconnected dilemmas by examining organizations almost
278
no one has studied and equally important, by studying them in tandem and showing their
historical relationship as part of a developing tradition of grassroots progressive
engagement in party politics.
The heart of this dissertation is a series of crucial yet overlooked organizations
that worked during the 1930s and 1940s to create a left-leaning electoral and lobbying
infrastructure: the National Progressive League (1932), the Progressive National
Committee (1936), the National Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt (1940),
the National Citizens Political Action Committee (1943-1946), the Motion Picture
Democratic Committee (1937-39), Hollywood for Roosevelt (1940) and the Hollywood
Democratic Committee (1943-1947). The stories of these groups constitute a key phase in
the longer history of liberals experimenting with strategies for building power within the
American political system. The tensions within these groups epitomized the confused
positioning of progressives in relation to the American political system, and to the
Democratic Party, in particular, as the primary vehicle for their ambitions. Internal
debates over which approaches, tactics, and organizational structures were most effective
occurred regularly and yet broke along unpredictable lines—not merely between
Communists and non-Communists, or between “liberals” and the “left.”
Most of these groups have rarely been studied in depth as organizations and no
scholar has ever studied them as a coherent series and made clear that they formed links
in a continuous chain as part of a much larger pattern of American political development.
Nor have they been adequately classified as a type of political institution. These
organizations do not necessarily fit into existing typologies of political organizations. To
279
the extent historians have classified them, it has been under the category of Popular Front
organizations. But this is a partial error. To compartmentalize them into one era in
history, and one that has far more porous boundaries than has been appreciated, is to
neglect their greater significance. This was not only the era of the Popular Front. It was
also the beginning of a much longer process of mutual cooptation between liberals and
the Democratic Party and these organizations represent a sort of “proto-party,” which for
many of its backers, were the forerunner of a wider, national vehicle to coordinate and
drive progressive forces more generally. The existing political parties were not
programmatic. Despite their aversion to parties, these progressives hoped to have some
type of vehicle to enact their will, and which would follow a distinct set of principles and
policies, rather than function jumbled juxtaposition of different political elements tied
together only by convenience and happenstance.
Equally important, this dissertation undermines historians’ prevailing
periodization schemes in several respects. It highlights the persistence of Progressive-era
cultural frames, of leading political figures, and of organizational models into the 1940s
and demonstrates their influence on the progressive politics of the Popular Front era in
unexpected ways. The study also demonstrates the continuities within the Popular Front
era and suggests the persistence of key Popular Front-era progressive tropes, leaders, and
constituencies past the typical 1948 demarcation.
The study offers important lessons for progressives themselves. Building on the
findings of recent historians of conservatism, centrism and moderate liberalism, who
280
have undermined the old Progressive truism about limitless virtue of “the people,” the
dissertation the destructive practical consequences for liberals’ own belief in this myth.
Values have to be divorced from strategy, to some extent. Those who seek to change the
world—to bridge the gap between how it is and how it ought to be—need a realistic view
of the world as it is, one not distorted by wishful thinking about the ease of change or its
natural tendencies.
Second, progressives ought to abandon the idea that solely because there is a need
for an alternative politics, that there exists a real or potential constituency for such
politics. Exhortations to new politics have their value, but it takes more than the “correct”
position to seize the moment—it requires well-developed institutions and networks
through which people are organized and mobilized. This well-developed organizational
infrastructure has to “organize the unorganized.” It is not enough to win over one party if
that party doesn’t consistently hold the power to enact its agenda. And reliance on a
single popular leader—the Democratic President—has recurred as a problem nearly every
decade since FDR.
The pattern set then echoes down to today. Now, as then, the Democratic
president prioritized achieving policy victories over building political power. Then as
now, progressives are bedeviled by their vexed relationship to the Democratic Party and
their fraught notion of the American people. Progressives cannot seem to live without the
Democratic Party but living with it seems equally challenging. Campaigning against the
American people is never a winning electoral strategy in the United States and yet
281
progressives have to recognize that for purposes of their internal strategizing, nothing can
be taken for granted. The progressive dilemma persists.
282

LIST OF PRIMARY SOURCES

Archival and Manuscript Collections

California State Archives, Sacramento, CA

California Democratic State Central Committee Records
Elizabeth Snyder Papers
Stephen Zetterberg Papers

California State University, Dominguez Hills Archives, Carson, CA

Glenn Anderson, U.S. Congressman, Papers

Columbia University Manuscripts Division, New York, NY

Charles Poletti Papers
Eugene Nickerson Papers
Herbert Lehman Papers
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New York Public Library Archives Division, New York, NY

Frank P. Walsh Papers
Louis Waldman Papers
Dean Alfange Papers
Liberal Party of New York State Records
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FDR Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY

Democratic National Committee, Women’s Divison, Records

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American Labor Party Records
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283
Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, Los Angeles, CA

California Democratic Council Records
Edward Mosk Papers
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Stanford University Libraries. Dept. of Special Collections, Palo Alto, CA

Bert N. Corona Papers
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Tamiment Library, New York University Libraries, New York, NY

Dorothy Epstein Papers
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University of Iowa, Special Collections, Iowa City, IA

C. B. Baldwin Papers
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University of California, Los Angeles, Young Research Library Special Collections

California Democratic Council Records
Joseph Wyatt CDC Records
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284
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Borough, Reuben. Oral History. “Reuben W. Borough and California Reform
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Asset Metadata

Creator Levitus, David Perry (author)

Core Title The progressive dilemma: grassroots liberals, the Democratic Party, and the search for political power in mid-twentieth century America

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program History

Publication Date 10/05/2015

Defense Date 06/06/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag democratic party,liberalism,New Deal,OAI-PMH Harvest,political power and strategy,Popular Front,progressivism

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Ethington, Philip J. (committee chair), Barnes, John E. (committee member), Deverell, William F. (committee member), Sánchez, George J. (committee member)

Creator Email david.levitus@gmail.com,levitus@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-336201

Unique identifier UC11297230

Identifier etd-LevitusDav-2081.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-336201 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LevitusDav-2081.pdf

Dmrecord 336201

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Levitus, David Perry

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA