Public Life
Anderson's interest in international affairs had been stirred by a trip to Europe in 1937, where in Germany she first saw a totalitarian state in action, as she recalled. On her return she spoke frequently for the League of Women Voters, fighting the strong isolationist policies of the time.
Anderson helped to create the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in 1944. Four years later, as one of the few women, she was elected to an office in the national Democratic Party. In 1948, as the DFL split from the national Democratic Party in a controversy over goals and ideology, she supported Hubert H. Humphrey. She was rewarded for this support in 1949, when she was appointed by President Truman as U.S. ambassador to Denmark (1949–1953). Truman's appointment made her the first woman appointed chief of mission at the ambassador level in US history. (The first female chief of mission at the minister rank was Ruth Bryan Owen in 1933).
She was later appointed by Kennedy to be ambassador to Bulgaria (1962–1964). Thus Anderson became the first American woman to represent the United States in a country allied with the Soviet Union.
After her retirement from these posts, President Johnson appointed Anderson to the United Nations Trusteeship Council and a year later she served on the United Nations Committee for Decolonization.
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