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| Rosalyn Baxandall obituary | Rosalyn Baxandall obituary |
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| The feminist historian and activist Rosalyn Baxandall, who has died of kidney cancer aged 76, was a redoubtable rebel who combined a fierce desire for individual freedom with a lifelong commitment to social justice and egalitarian community. | The feminist historian and activist Rosalyn Baxandall, who has died of kidney cancer aged 76, was a redoubtable rebel who combined a fierce desire for individual freedom with a lifelong commitment to social justice and egalitarian community. |
| In 1967, as the women’s liberation movement began, Ros helped to start the feminist protest group New York Radical Women, and later became a member of Redstockings. These groups started to redefine the scope of politics: women’s experiences of their bodies, of lesbianism, of housework, of childcare, rape or domestic violence ceased to be simply personal. They also broke taboos. Ros’s was the first voice heard at the dramatic 1967 abortion “speak out” in New York, describing undergoing an illegal termination. | In 1967, as the women’s liberation movement began, Ros helped to start the feminist protest group New York Radical Women, and later became a member of Redstockings. These groups started to redefine the scope of politics: women’s experiences of their bodies, of lesbianism, of housework, of childcare, rape or domestic violence ceased to be simply personal. They also broke taboos. Ros’s was the first voice heard at the dramatic 1967 abortion “speak out” in New York, describing undergoing an illegal termination. |
| As a member of Witch (the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), an activist theatre group, she took part in the infiltration of a bridal fair at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Clad in symbolic chains, the protesters just had time to pronounce themselves “free human beings” and release white mice before the police came. The pandemonium was exhilarating, but raised political doubts. Was alienating other women the best idea? Creating Liberation Nursery, the first feminist day care centre in New York, was more constructive. Not only did it provide Ros’s son, Phineas, with some good friends, but it still exists. | As a member of Witch (the Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), an activist theatre group, she took part in the infiltration of a bridal fair at Madison Square Garden in 1969. Clad in symbolic chains, the protesters just had time to pronounce themselves “free human beings” and release white mice before the police came. The pandemonium was exhilarating, but raised political doubts. Was alienating other women the best idea? Creating Liberation Nursery, the first feminist day care centre in New York, was more constructive. Not only did it provide Ros’s son, Phineas, with some good friends, but it still exists. |
| I met Ros in 1974 when American socialist feminists were connecting with new organisations among black and working-class women and reaching out to international women’s movements. Anecdotes, ideas, hopes and dreams criss-crossed continents. Ros, along with socialist feminist historians in the US and elsewhere, started to look at the past in new ways, with the aim of creating a women’s history that interconnected with race and class. In co-operation with Linda Gordon and Susan Reverby, she produced the pioneering America’s Working Women: A Documentary History 1600 to the Present (1976). It chronicled not only work for wages but also unpaid domestic labour, and looked at consciousness as well as conditions. The revised edition in 1995 added new material on race and ethnicity. | |
| Ros’s Words on Fire (1987), about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and later a leading communist, indicated problems with equality for women in the libertarian left IWW, as well as within a centralised party structure. Flynn was a leading figure in both, but remained the exception. | Ros’s Words on Fire (1987), about Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, an organiser for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and later a leading communist, indicated problems with equality for women in the libertarian left IWW, as well as within a centralised party structure. Flynn was a leading figure in both, but remained the exception. |
| Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (2000), with Elizabeth Ewen, combined oral and written sources to reveal a reality that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) had missed. Female suburban pioneers had to conjure nurseries, schools and libraries from the mud left by speculative developers; exhaustion rather than ennui was their problem. Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement (2000), compiled with Gordon, featured original texts and images ranging from articles about work and welfare to a zany Wonder Woman with speculum, and was part of a wider project to demonstrate the radical scope and playful utopian subversion of the early movement. | Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened (2000), with Elizabeth Ewen, combined oral and written sources to reveal a reality that Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) had missed. Female suburban pioneers had to conjure nurseries, schools and libraries from the mud left by speculative developers; exhaustion rather than ennui was their problem. Dear Sisters: Dispatches from the Women’s Liberation Movement (2000), compiled with Gordon, featured original texts and images ranging from articles about work and welfare to a zany Wonder Woman with speculum, and was part of a wider project to demonstrate the radical scope and playful utopian subversion of the early movement. |
| Ros was born in Manhattan, New York. Her childhood was shadowed by the McCarthyite witch-hunt against the American left; she was a “red diaper” baby, with parents, Irma (nee London) and Lewis Fraad, who were prominent communists, and a great-uncle, Meyer London, who had been a Socialist party member of Congress. From this background Ros imbibed the courage to hold unpopular convictions, along with an optimism about the American people. Ros was to reject many aspects of the old left, but always respected what they had achieved. | Ros was born in Manhattan, New York. Her childhood was shadowed by the McCarthyite witch-hunt against the American left; she was a “red diaper” baby, with parents, Irma (nee London) and Lewis Fraad, who were prominent communists, and a great-uncle, Meyer London, who had been a Socialist party member of Congress. From this background Ros imbibed the courage to hold unpopular convictions, along with an optimism about the American people. Ros was to reject many aspects of the old left, but always respected what they had achieved. |
| She became a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1950s, graduating in French in 1961. The following year she married Lee Baxandall, a writer on theatre and Marxist aesthetics. These were the early days of the new left when boundaries seemed to be dissolving and a joyous sense of creative possibility prevailed. Beats declaimed in little magazines, Bob Dylan sang protest songs in clubs and radical historians dressed like lumberjacks. Life, art and politics fused. Ros thrived in this bohemian melange and it marked her for life. | She became a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1950s, graduating in French in 1961. The following year she married Lee Baxandall, a writer on theatre and Marxist aesthetics. These were the early days of the new left when boundaries seemed to be dissolving and a joyous sense of creative possibility prevailed. Beats declaimed in little magazines, Bob Dylan sang protest songs in clubs and radical historians dressed like lumberjacks. Life, art and politics fused. Ros thrived in this bohemian melange and it marked her for life. |
| The wild young rebel eventually became a distinguished teaching professor, at the State University of New York, Old Westbury, in 2004. From 2012, she taught Labor Studies at the City University of New York. Wherever she went, Ros agitated and organised. She also welcomed and cared for innumerable people. As Phineas says: “Her passion and energy went most into learning about people, connecting them with each other, teaching students, helping young activists and discussing ideas.” | The wild young rebel eventually became a distinguished teaching professor, at the State University of New York, Old Westbury, in 2004. From 2012, she taught Labor Studies at the City University of New York. Wherever she went, Ros agitated and organised. She also welcomed and cared for innumerable people. As Phineas says: “Her passion and energy went most into learning about people, connecting them with each other, teaching students, helping young activists and discussing ideas.” |
| Ros’s marriage ended in divorce in 1978. She is survived by her partner, Howard Seeman, and by Phineas and two grandchildren, Julian and Nellie. | Ros’s marriage ended in divorce in 1978. She is survived by her partner, Howard Seeman, and by Phineas and two grandchildren, Julian and Nellie. |
| • Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, historian and activist, born 12 June 1939; died 13 October 2015 | • Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, historian and activist, born 12 June 1939; died 13 October 2015 |
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