Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Addie Viola Smith/archive1

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Addie Viola Smith (November 14, 1893 – December 13, 1975), also known as Shi Fanglan (Chinese: 施芳蘭), was an American attorney who served as the United States trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1949. She was the first female Foreign Service officer in the United States Foreign Service to work under the United States Department of Commerce and the first woman to serve as an assistant trade commissioner.

Smith was born and raised in Stockton, California. In 1917, she moved to Washington, D.C. While working for the United States Department of Labor, she was a part time student at the Washington College of Law, earning her bachelor of laws in 1920. In October 1920, she joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Beijing as a clerk in the trade commissioner's office. Smith was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai in 1922, and appointed trade commissioner of Shanghai in 1928, a post she held until 1939. For the remainder of her career, she held several roles in the United States government, international organizations, and the United Nations. Throughout her life, Smith was also a member of several feminist organizations; scholars have described her international feminist activism as being rooted in imperialist and colonialist attitudes. Smith met her life partner, Eleanor Mary Hinder, in Shanghai in 1926. They lived together until Hinder’s death in 1963. Smith died on December 13, 1975, in Mosman, New South Wales, Australia, and was cremated. Smith and Hinder were memorialized by their friends with two stone seats at the E.G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens in Caringbah.