Strauss, Anna Lord, 1899-1979

Anna Lord Strauss, civic worker, was born in New York City on September 20, 1899, the daughter of Albert and Lucretia Mott (Lord) Strauss and the maternal great-granddaughter of the abolitionist and woman suffrage leader Lucretia Mott. She was educated in New York City and attended the New York School of Secretaries. In 1918 she became a secretary in the New York office of the Federal Reserve Board. She held several similar positions in state and federal government before joining the staff of Century Magazine in 1923; here she advanced from secretary to assistant to the editor, assistant editor, and managing editor, continuing in the last position until 1929.

In 1934 ALS became a member of the League of Women Voters, to which she devoted the major portion of her energies for the next sixteen years. She served as president of the LWV of New York City from 1937 to 1943, and was elected national president in 1944, having filled various national offices as a member of the National Board. After her presidential term ended (1950), ALS continued to work with the League in various capacities: president, Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund, 1954-1959; trustee, Overseas Education Fund; and others.

Both Presidents Eisenhower and Truman appointed her to national and international boards and missions; the most prominent were the President's Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights (1951), and the U. S. Delegation to the United Nations Sixth General Assembly, which met in Paris in 1951-1952. ALS continued her interest in the United Nations with the directorship of the American Association for the United Nations and membership in the United States Committee for the United Nations and the United Nations Association of the United States of America. During the 1960s she devoted much of her time to the Committee of Correspondence, New York City, a group of eighteen American women who exchanged ideas and experience with women leaders throughout the world in order to bring about better understanding and cooperation.

President of the League of Women Voters of the U.S. (1944-1950), Strauss was active in the N.Y.C. and state Leagues as well as in the Carrie Chapman Catt Memorial Fund, which became the Overseas Education Fund. A presidential appointee to the President's Commission on Internal Security and Individual Rights (1951) and the U.S. Delegation to the United Nations (1951-1952), Strauss directed the American Association for the UN, and was a member of the U.S. Committee for the UN, the UN Association of the USA, and the Committee of Correspondence, N.Y.C.

Civic leader.