John Reed

After graduation Reed traveled to Spain and England, and began a career in journalism, writing for Leftist journals and magazines. In 1913 his collection of poems, "Sangor was published.

In 1914 Reed was sent by Metropolitan magazine to Mexico where he spent four months with Pancho Villa and his troops, and described the revolutionary fighting in, "Insurgent Mexico, 1914". Reed also reported on fighting in Germany, Serbia, and Russia among other places. An operation requiring the removal of one kidney forced Reed to return to the United States.

Reed became the reader of The Communist Labor Party in Chicago, and later was wanted by the US government for criminal anarchy.

It was while on the staff of "The Masses" that he met his future wife Louise Bryant, a journalist and Marxist, they were married in 1917 and Reed again traveled to Russia to report on the revolution, this time with Louise.

While in Finland Reed was found with diamonds, a large sum of money and letters from Trotsky and Lenin in his possesion, he was arrested and found guilty of smuggling.

On his release, Reed went again to Russia where he gave speeches in support of the revolution, was elected to the executive committee of the communist organization, Comintern. At the height of his career John Reed was stricken with Typhus and he died in Moscow on October 19, 1920 and was buried behind the Kremlin wall, the only American honored in this way.

Reed's "Ten Days That Shook the World" published in 1919, focused on the critical days leading up to the Bolshevik revolution and is his most enduring work.

The 1981 movie, "Reds" starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton is the story of John Reed and Louis Bryant's relationship, Reed's involvement in the 1917 revolution and his idealistic vision of such a revolution in America.