Anna Louise Strong (November 24, 1885 – March 29, 1970) was an American journalist and activist, best known for her reporting on and support for communist movements in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

[7] Her father, Sydney Dix Strong, was a Social Gospel minister in the Congregational Church, active in missionary work, and a dedicated pacifist.

[6][7][8] In 1908, at the age of 23, she finished her education and received a PhD in philosophy from the University of Chicago with a thesis later published as The Social Psychology of Prayer.

[4] Living with her father from 1916 to 1921, she favored the political climate there, which was pro-labor and progressive, with "radicalizing events" like the Seattle General Strike and Everett massacre.

She organized cooperative summer camps in the Cascades and led climbing parties up Mount Rainier, leading to the Washington Alpine Club, formed in 1916.

[6][12] In 1916, Strong ran for the Seattle School Board and won easily due to the support she garnered from women's groups and organized labor and to her work on child welfare.

[6][4] After this, Strong's fellow school board members were quick to launch a recall campaign against her due to her association with the IWW, and won by a narrow margin.

Her former colleagues acceded to her request, but they made it clear that they wanted a mainstream, patriotic representative, a mother with children in the schools.

"[1][3] Strong became openly associated with the Seattle's labor-owned daily newspaper, The Union Record, writing forceful pro-labor articles and promoting the new Soviet government.

[6][18][19] In 1925, during the era of the New Economic Policy in the USSR, she returned to the United States to arouse interest among businessmen in industrial investment and development in the Soviet Union.

As she continued to "wave the banner for the needy and downtrodden" wherever there was a revolution there was "Ms. Strong," and she became further convinced by what she experienced that socialism might be the answer to problems in the world.

Quietly and privately distressed with developments in the USSR (The "Great Purges"), she continued to write for leading periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, The Nation and Asia.

[20] In 1938, Strong visited the Eighth Route Army Headquarters in Shanxi, China, meeting with Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, He Long, Liu Bocheng, and Lin Biao.

[20] The following year, she exposed the plot by Chiang Kai-Shek to divide the "united front" against Japan in the 15-page article, "The Kuomintang-communist crisis in China; a first-hand account of one of the most critical periods in Far Eastern history" published in March.

"[26] While in the USSR she traveled throughout the huge nation, including Ukraine, Kuznetsk, Stalingrad, Kiev, Siberia, Central Asia, Uzbekistan, and many more.

[3][9][28] In World War II, when the Red Army began its advance against Nazi Germany, Strong stayed in the rear following the soldiers through Warsaw, Łódź and Gdańsk.

[30]: 32–33 After this, she was cut off from the USSR, shunned by Communists in the United States, and denied a passport by the U.S. government, settling in California where she wrote, lectured, and "invested in real estate.

I owned a town house, a summer lodge in the mountains, a winter cabin in the desert, a car and a driver's license to take myself about.

Du Bois, who visited China during the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, with a photograph of Mao Zedong, Anna Louise Strong, and W.E.B.

[37] It was in an interview with her in August 1946, Mao made his famous statement that the United States' atomic bombs and American reactionaries were paper tigers.

[38][39][24]: 204 Two years after that, she made a keynote speech on China's realities and tried to change the stance of the U.S. government in backing the Chinese nationalists.

"[7][3] She was not stopped, even by her old age, in her dedication to "Marxist doctrine," especially in China and across the world, writing emotional and colorful accounts that were very popular.

[7][4][8][9] Guo delivered a euology for her, and Mao, Zhou, Lin Biao, and other high level leadership sent wreaths to her memorial.