James I. Loeb

James I. Loeb (1908–1992) was a 20th-century American politician and U.S. ambassador to Peru, who served as the first national executive secretary of Americans for Democratic Action and Equatorial Guineau.

James Isaac Loeb, Jr., was born on August 18, 1909, in Highland Park, Illinois.

In 1929, he obtained an AB from Dartmouth College. In 1931, he obtained an AM from Northwestern University and in 1936 a doctorate.

Loeb began his career as a teacher of the French and Spanish languages at the Townsend Harris High School.

He provided support from American organizations in the latter years of the Spanish Civil War. He also joined the International Labor Solidarity Committee of the Socialist Party of America and was anti-communist. During this time, he traveled to Europe to help Spanish refugees. He interacted with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, American Civil Liberties Union, and Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy.

In 1941, with Reinhold Niebuhr he co-founded the Union for Democratic Action (UDA), which he served as executive director.

In 1947, he helped merge the UDA into Americans for Democratic Action, which he also served as executive secretary until 1953.

In 1948, ADA tried to recruit (then) General Dwight D. Eisenhower to run for president as a Democrat, which came about "in a very peculiar way." Sidney Hillman had Philip Murray, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) speak at a CIO convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Eisenhower made a pro-labor speech. Murray loved Eisenhower's speech. He had Jack Kroll of the CIO Political Action Committee (CIO-PAC) ask ADA to serve as indirect conduit and recruit Eisenhower through his younger brother, Milton S. Eisenhower.

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