John Reed, American Journalist

Undated portrait of John Reed. John Silas Jack Reed (1887-1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, best remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. He was married to writer and feminist Louise Bryant. Reed made his home in Greenwich Village, a burgeoning hub of poets and artists. His formal jobs on magazines paid the rent, but it was as a freelance journalist that Jack sought to establish himself. In 1913 he joined the staff of The Masses and contributed more than 50 articles and reviews. In 1913 he was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine to report the Mexican Revolution. A series of outstanding magazine articles brought Reed a national reputation as a war correspondent. In 1917, Reed and Bryant set sail from New York to Europe. They were going as working journalists to report upon the sensational developments taking place in the fledgling republic of Russia and wound up at ground zero for the October Revolution, in which the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik) headed by Vladimir Lenin toppled the Kerensky government. Bryant was holding his hand when he died from spotted typhus in 1920. After a hero's funeral, his body was buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis

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Activist Bolshevik Shook Silas Social-democratic Typhus

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