Rosalyn Baxandall ( Fraad; June 12, 1939 – October 13, 2015) was an American historian of women's activism and feminist activist.

Early life and education

Baxandall was born in New York City on June 12, 1939.
/ref> Her father, Lewis M. Fraad, was chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Bronx Municipal Hospital, and Assistant Dean of the

Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Founded in 1953, Einstein operates as an independent degree-granting institution as part of t ...

. Her mother, Irma London Fraad, was a curator of Middle Eastern Art at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

. She had two sisters, Harriet Fraad Wolff (born 1941) and Julie Fraad (born 1948). Baxandall's maternal great-uncle,

Meyer London Meyer London (December 29, 1871 – June 6, 1926) was an American politician from New York City. He represented the Lower East Side of Manhattan and was one of only two members of the Socialist Party of America elected to the United States Congre ...

, was a U.S. Congressional Representative elected on the Socialist Party ticket in 1915. He was one of 50 Congressmen and six Senators to oppose U.S. entry into

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Rosalyn's uncle, Ephraim London, a labor lawyer, was a distinguished civil libertarian and legal scholar. She attended

Riverdale Country Day School Riverdale Country School is a co-educational, independent, college-preparatory day school in New York City serving pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade. It is located on two campuses covering more than in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, ...

and then

Hunter High School Hunter High School is a public high school located at 4200 South 5600 West, West Valley City, Utah, United States. It was opened in 1990 with its first graduating class graduating in 1991. During the first school year (1990–1991), the enrollme ...

, graduating in 1957. After high school she attended

Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...

for one year and then the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

from which she graduated with a major in French in 1961. While at the university, she was active in a struggle for racial integration in housing.

Early career and feminist activism

Baxandall began to work for Mobilization for Youth, a service organization on the lower east side of New York City founded by

Frances Fox Piven Frances Fox Piven (born October 10, 1932) is an American professor of political science and sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where she has taught since 1982.

and

Richard Cloward Richard Andrew Cloward (December 25, 1926 – August 20, 2001) was an American sociologist and activist. He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the Na ...

in 1961, where she led youth groups and started a day care center. She translated French articles for the New Left journals ''Liberation'' and ''Viet Report''. A leader from the earliest days of the New York City

women's liberation movement The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...

, Baxandall was a founding member of

New York Radical Women New York Radical Women (NYRW) was an early second-wave radical feminist group that existed from 1967 to 1969. They drew nationwide media attention when they unfurled a banner inside the 1968 Miss America pageant displaying the words "Women' ...

, established in 1967, which published the well-known ''Notes from the First Year'' and ''Notes from the Second Year''. She was also a member of

Redstockings Redstockings, also known as Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, is a radical feminist nonprofit that was founded in January 1969 in New York City, whose goal is "To Defend and Advance the Women's Liberation Agenda". The group's name ...

, created in 1969; WITCH (the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), which arose as a split-off from New York Radical Women, emphasizing political rather than personal change; No More Nice Girls; and CARASA (Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse).". She was a member of the east-coast Marxist Feminist Group #1, an informal discussion group of scholars on

socialist feminism Socialist feminism rose in the 1960s and 1970s as an offshoot of the feminist movement and New Left that focuses upon the interconnectivity of the patriarchy and capitalism. However, the ways in which women's private, domestic, and public roles ...

. Shortly after her son was born, she and other parents founded Liberation Nursery, a cooperative that continues as a daycare center today. In 1968, Baxandall appeared on the nationally syndicated David Susskind show with fellow feminists Kate Millett, Anselma Del'Olio and Jacqui Ceballoss. She was also the first speaker at the historic abortion speak-out at Washington Square Methodist Church in 1969.

Career

Baxandall was among the early faculty, starting in 1971, at the new campus of the

State University of New York at Old Westbury The State University of New York College at Old Westbury (SUNY at Old Westbury) is a public college in Old Westbury, New York, with portions in the neighboring town of Jericho, New York. It enrolls just over 5,000 students. History The State Uni ...

( SUNY). Beginning as Associate Professor of American Studies, in 1990 she became a full professor there. In 2004 she was awarded a Distinguished Teaching Professorship. She retired in 2012. Upon her retirement, a scholarship was established in her name and that of Barbara Joseph (the Rosalyn Baxandall and Barbara Joseph Scholarship). After retirement, she taught at the Labor Studies Program of the City University of New York (

CUNY , mottoeng = The education of free people is the hope of Mankind , budget = $3.6 billion , established = , type = Public university system , chancellor = Fél ...

) as well as in a women's prison,

Bayview Correctional Facility Bayview Correctional Facility was a medium-security women's prison located at the south corner of West 20th Street and 11th Avenue in Manhattan, directly across the avenue from the Chelsea Piers sports complex. It is highly unusual to find a stat ...

in Manhattan, through the

Bard Prison Initiative The Bard Prison Initiative (BPI) is a program of Bard College that provides college education to people in prison. Currently operating in six prisons across New York State, BPI's academic programs engage students in the full breadth of liberal stud ...

. She was a frequent speaker and commentator on

women's liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...

, women's activist history, and radical activist movements. Especially in her later years, she was a champion for the rights of Palestinians, a commitment that led her to edit an anthology of films about the Palestine-Israel conflict.

Publications

Her books include: * * * (revised ed. 1995) * Baxandall wrote many articles for magazines and journals, including ''Second-Wave Soundings'' with co-author

Linda Gordon Linda Gordon is an American feminist and historian. She lives in New York City and in Madison, Wisconsin. She won the Marfield Prize for ''Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits'', and the Antonovych Prize for ''Cossack Rebellions: Social Turmoil ...

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...

and ''Re-Visioning the Women's Liberation Movement's Narrative: Early Second Wave African American Feminists'' in

Feminist Studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppressi ...

, as well as authoring the pamphlet, ''Women and Abortion: The Body as Battleground''. Her work is also in several anthologies, including ''A Companion to American Women's History''; ''Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left''; ''Technology, the Labor Process and the Working Class: Essays''; and the ''Encyclopedia of the American Left''. She wrote an introduction to a new collection of works by

Clara Zetkin Clara Zetkin (; ; ''née'' Eißner ; 5 July 1857 – 20 June 1933) was a German Marxist theorist, communist activist, and advocate for women's rights. Until 1917, she was active in the Social Democratic Party of Germany. She then joined the ...

, ''Clara Zetkin: Selected Writings''. Baxandall was interviewed in the 2005 film by Gillian Aldrich and Jennifer Baumgardner, ''I Had An Abortion''. Some of her papers on the women's liberation movement are available in the Duke University Library Special Collections; Papers from her work with

are housed in the

Tamiment Library The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. Th ...

and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University. An extensive collection of her papers, interviews, and letters are in a collection at Radcliffe Library at Harvard University.

Personal life

At the University of Wisconsin, she met

Lee Baxandall Lee Raymond Baxandall (January 26, 1935 – November 28, 2008) was an American writer, translator, editor, and activist. He was first known for his New Left engagement with cultural topics and then as a leader of the naturist movement. Early ...

, to whom she was married from 1962 until they divorced in 1978. Together, they had one son, Phineas Baxandall. After leaving Madison, Rosalyn and Lee Baxandall spent some time in Germany, Hungary and Poland, where Lee pursued his interests in radical theater and European Marxism. The experience solidified their convictions that the Soviet system did not offer an alternative. Moving back to New York, she enrolled in the

Columbia University School of Social Work The Columbia University School of Social Work is the graduate school of social work of Columbia University. It is the nation's oldest social work program, with roots extending back to 1898, when the New York Charity Organization Society's first s ...

from which she received a

Master of Social Work The Master of Social Work (MSW) is a master's degree in the field of social work. It is a professional degree with specializations compared to Bachelor of Social Work (BSW). MSW promotes macro-, mezzo- and micro-aspects of professional social wor ...

(MSW). Rosalyn Baxandall's maternal cousin was

Sheila Michaels Sheila Babs Michaels, also known as Sheila Shiki-y-Michaels (May 8, 1939 – June 22, 2017), was an American feminist and civil rights activist credited with popularizing Ms. as a default form of address for women regardless of their marital st ...

, also a remarkable feminist in her own right, whom Ephraim London never publicly acknowledged as his daughter.

Death

After a 2015 diagnosis of

kidney cancer Kidney cancer, also known as renal cancer, is a group of cancers that starts in the kidney. Symptoms may include blood in the urine, lump in the abdomen, or back pain. Fever, weight loss, and tiredness may also occur. Complications can include spr ...

, she left the hospital and held a party to say goodbye to the hundred attendees. She died on October 13, 2015 at her home in New York City.

References

External links

Rosalyn Baxandall, Social Archive
Tully-Crenshaw Feminist Oral History Project Records, 1961-2001
MC 548. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Papers of Rosalyn Baxandall, 1933-2015: A Finding Aid.Schlesinger Library
Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. {{DEFAULTSORT:Baxandall, Rosalyn 1939 births 2015 deaths 20th-century American historians 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers American women historians City University of New York faculty Columbia University School of Social Work alumni Deaths from kidney cancer Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Feminist historians Historians from New York (state) New York (state) socialists New York Radical Women members People from Manhattan Redstockings members Riverdale Country School alumni Smith College alumni American socialist feminists State University of New York at Old Westbury faculty University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni Writers from Manhattan