Katherine Pollak Ellickson

Katherine Pollak Ellickson (September 1, 1905 – December 28, 1996) was an American labor economist. For much of her career, she worked for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). During the Kennedy administration, she was executive director of the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women and helped create the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Early life Katherine Pollak was born on September 1, 1905, in Yonkers, New York, and grew up in Manhattan in the midst of the Ethical Culture movement. Her father, Francis D. Pollak, was a lawyer as was her uncle, Walter Heilprin Pollak; her mother, Inez Cohen, was an activist involved in labor, feminist, and consumer issues. She attended the Ethical Culture School, a private preparatory school in New York City, and studied economics at Vassar, where she earned an A.B. degree in 1926. She pursued graduate studies at Columbia University.

Career Ellickson started her career in the workers' education movement, teaching and writing for Brookwood Labor College (1929–1932), the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry (1927–1949), and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) Southern teachers' training school in 1934. She also did field work in the textile mills of the South and the coal mining camps of West Virginia.

In the late 1930s she worked for the fledgling Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as assistant to director John Brophy at the national office, doing organizational work, research, and speechwriting.

Publications