Edna Lee Booker | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1897-10-04)October 4, 1897[1] Danville, Virginia, U.S. |
| Died | October 27, 1994(1994-10-27) (aged 97) Bethesda, Maryland, U.S. |
| Occupation | journalist |
| Notable work | News Is My Job: A Correspondent in War-Torn China Flight from China |
| Spouse | |
| Children | Patricia Luce Chapman |
Edna Lee Booker Potter (October 4, 1897 – October 27, 1994) was an American journalist who authored several books about China during the 1930s and 1940s.
Born inDanville, Virginia,[2] she later moved to California, where she worked at theLos Angeles Herald and theSan Francisco Call-Bulletin.[3]
She arrived inShanghai in 1919 as foreign correspondent for theInternational News Service ofNew York City and as, in her own words, a "girl reporter" for theChina Press, then the leading American daily in China. She became the first foreign woman correspondent to interview Chinese warlordsZhang Zuolin andWu Peifu.[3]
In 1923, Booker married businessman John Stauffer Potter in Shanghai, where he was director of theBank of China after theSecond World War.[4] They were living in Shanghai in 1937, when Imperial Japaninvaded and occupied China. Just days before the relocation of citizens to Japanese internment camps, Booker Potter and her children fled to the United States. However, her husband was interned for years.[3]
She and her husband had a son, John Jr., and a daughter, Patricia.[5] In 1947, her daughter married the son of newspaper magnateHenry Luce.[4] She later wrote a memoir of the family's China years entitledTea On The Great Wall, published in 2014.[3]
| International | |
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| National | |
| Other | |
