Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 20, 2024
Addie Viola Smith (1893–1975) was an American attorney who served as the U.S. trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1949, the first female Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Foreign Service to work under the Commerce Department, and the first woman to serve as trade commissioner. Smith was born and raised in Stockton, California. She moved to Washington, D.C., in 1917. While working for the United States Department of Labor, she attended the Washington College of Law part-time, earning a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1920. She joined the Foreign Service in October that year. Posted to Beijing as a clerk, she was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai in 1922, and to trade commissioner in 1928. She later held roles in the U.S. government, world organizations, and the United Nations. Smith met her life partner, Eleanor Mary Hinder, in Shanghai in 1926. Both were memorialized by their friends with stone seats at the E. G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens in Caringbah. (Full article...)