Anna Louise Strong (She/Her)
by Steven Wu (He/Him)
Anna Louise Strong was a socialist educator, politician, and journalist who actively participated in the American labor movement. Her career spanned six decades across three continents.
Born in Nebraska in 1885, Strong grew up in a middle-class household embedded in the Christian Progressive movement. Her parents instilled in her a love for literature and a firm sense of justice. She attended Oberlin College, Bryn Mawr College, and the University of Chicago. In Chicago, she began her writing career as an associate editor at a local paper, The Advance. She published articles under a pseudonym, a practice she would return to throughout her life. In 1908, she earned her PhD in Philosophy and moved to Seattle. From 1910 to 1916, Strong traveled the country lecturing and hosting popular child welfare exhibits for the National Child Labor Committee. These exhibits not only raised awareness of child labor conditions but also provided valuable organizing experience for thousands of community activists.
Strong’s pioneering work for children’s welfare led to her election to the Seattle School Board in 1916. She was the first woman to hold that position. Her support for anti-poverty measures, association with the radical International Workers of the World, and opposition to the military draft earned her the enmity of her fellow board members, who attacked her as “un-American”. Conservative business interests initiated a successful recall campaign against her two years after her election. Despite being forced out of office, Strong remained politically active. She wrote for the Seattle Union Record, covering labor strikes and violent company reprisals. As a journalist, she saw anti-union violence as abuses against freedom of speech and fundamentally anti-democratic. On February 4, 1919, she published an impassioned plea for organized labor to throw off the yoke of its oppressors. Two days later, a citywide general strike began.
Inspired by the socialist revolution in Russia, Strong traveled to Moscow as a foreign correspondent in 1921. She would remain there for several years documenting the social landscape of the early USSR, with a particular focus on the evolving role of women. In 1925, she moved to China to report on the Chinese Civil War. Over the next few decades, Strong would write a vast body of work on her experiences in the Russian and Chinese revolutions, being one of the few Americans to witness both in their entirety. During this period, she maintained correspondences with many notable figures, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
Strong returned to the United States infrequently in her later years, eventually emigrating to China permanently. She died there in 1970. Today, she is little-known in both countries. Still, Strong’s influence on the early Seattle labor movement was powerful and enduring. She served as its public voice during a period of profound repression and violence. She was unflinchingly radical and steadfast in her beliefs, even when faced with impossible odds. A prolific writer, Strong’s complete archived papers are available in the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections.
