Ernestine Evans

Ernestine Evans (August 9, 1889 – July 3, 1967) was an American journalist, editor, author and literary agent.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, she lived in Elkhart, Indiana during her childhood and attended the University of Chicago, receiving a Bachelor of Philosophy degree in 1912. She was arrested in 1917, along with Peggy Baird Johns and Dorothy Day, for picketing on behalf of women's rights. In the 1920s, according to the historian Alan M. Wald, she was married to Kenneth Durant, the head of the United States branch of the Soviet press agency TASS.Secret services reports released by the United Kingdom government in 2005 state that Evans left for Britain with Durant in 1925, after Durant was expelled from the United States due to his connection with various Communist front organisations. Her relationship with Durant was over by 1935, when he married Evans's former colleague, the poet Genevieve Taggard.

In the 1930s she met Walker Evans and Ben Shahn. Walker Evans was impressed by her intelligence and was always quick to point out they were not related.

Evans's career also involved work for the United States government. She worked for the Resettlement Administration, where her duties included conducting research for Roy Stryker, a pioneer in the field of documentary photography and a central figure in the Farm Security Administration. Additionally, during World War II, Evans worked for the Office of War Information in the Overseas Publications department of the Publications Bureau. With this position, she collaborated with the African-American photographer Gordon Parks, her colleague at OWI, who would go on to rise to prominence as a documentary photographer and film director.

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