Alma Marie Sullivan Reed (1889–1966) was an American journalist. While working in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 in the 1920s, she fell in love with the governor of Yucatán, Felipe Carrillo Puerto

Felipe Carrillo Puerto

Felipe Carrillo Puerto was a Governor of the Mexican state of Yucatán. He was born in the town of Motul, Yucatán, and was of partly indigenous Mayan background; he was rumored to be a descendant of the Nachi Cocom dynasty of Mayapan. He was a socialist who favored land reform, women's suffrage,...

; however, he was assassinated a few days before their planned marriage. The ballad "Peregrina" is based on their romance. Reed remained interested in Mexico and in Carrillo Puerto's causes; she was eventually awarded Mexico's Aztec Eagle award for her work on behalf of Mexico's culture and arts.

Later in life, Reed was a supporter of the artist José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...

 and wrote a biography of him, Orozco (ISBN 0-87817-204-1).

Early years

A San Francisco native, Reed was born Alma Sullivan into an Irish Catholic family in 1889. Her marriage to businessman Samuel Payne Reed ended in annulment after he became ill. Outspoken, adventurous and bohemian, she carried what one observer described as the "mystic ailments that sometimes befall the people" of California.

Journalism career

She rose to fame as a journalist while writing for the San Francisco Call. An advocate for the disenfranchised, she was responsible for helping change the state's death penalty laws after she wrote a series of articles in 1921 about the death sentence given to a 17-year-old Mexican boy convicted of murder. Her articles led to the state commuting his sentence.
Her writing won her an invitation by Mexican President Alvaro Obregón

Álvaro Obregón

General Álvaro Obregón Salido was the President of Mexico from 1920 to 1924. He was assassinated in 1928, shortly after winning election to another presidential term....

 to be his guest in Mexico City. While traveling through the Yucatán, she wrote another series of articles on the thefts of Mayan artifacts for the Peabody Museum at Harvard University by American explorer and archaeologist Edward Thompson. The articles led the museum to return some of the objects to Mexico.

Art Patron

The New York Times took notice of the young journalist and hired her to continue reporting from Mexico and later the Middle East. By 1928, she settled in New York City and dubbed her apartment "the Ashram" to honor the Hindu hermitage where sages lived in peace among nature and to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi , pronounced . 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the pre-eminent political and ideological leader of India during the Indian independence movement...

's pacifism. Early after establishing the studio, Reed met Orozco, who had been living in Manhattan and doing poorly in making a living. She immediately fell in love with his work and gave him a one-man show in September 1928.

Not long after the exhibition, she rented a portion of the top floor of the building on East 57th Street and established a formal gallery called Delphic Studios. She promoted many Mexican artists but she remained the principal patron for Orozco. She also exhibited the Mexican-themed watercolors and oils of Los Angeles artist Leo Politi

Leo Politi

Leo Politi was an Italian-American artist and author who wrote and illustrated some 20 children's books, as well as Bunker Hill, Los Angeles , intended for adults...

in 1937. The one-man exhibit helped launch Politi's career as an author and illustrator of children's books.