John Reed is on the Tour

John Silas "Jack" Reed (1887 – 1920), often referred to by his nickname, was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. He was married to writer and feminist Louise Bryant.

The uses of John Reed as a symbol in popular culture have been varied. Some have dismissed him as a "romantic revolutionary" and a "playboy" — a vapid dilettante pretending to profess revolutionary sensibilities. For the Communist movement to which he belonged, Reed became a symbol of the international nature of the Bolshevik revolution, a martyr buried at the Kremlin wall amidst solemn fanfare, his name to be uttered reverently as a member of the radical pantheon. Others, such as his old friend and comrade Benjamin Gitlow, made the claim that Reed had begun to shun the bureaucracy and violence of Soviet Communism late in his life and have thus sought to posthumously enlist Reed in their own anti-communist cause.

John Reed has also been an influence upon the cinema. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's influential 1927 silent film October: Ten Days That Shook the World was based on Reed's book.

Half a century later, Warren Beatty made the 1981 film Reds, based on the life of John Reed. Warren Beatty starred as Reed, while Diane Keaton played the part of Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson that of Eugene O'Neill. The movie won three Academy Awards, and was nominated for nine others. Other film portrayals of Reed include the 1982 two-part Soviet production Red Bells, starring Franco Nero, and the 1973 film Reed: Mexico Insurgente, based on his accounts of the Mexican Revolution.

A persistent urban legend exists that John Reed came from the family for which Reed College, an elite liberal arts school located in Portland, was named. Despite the college's reputation for leftist politics, there is no truth to this rumor. The College was named for Simeon Reed by his widow Amanda Reed who donated a significant part of her inherited fortune to establish the college in 1911.