Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall, or “Ros” to her friends, was a trailblazing second-wave feminist and a lifelong radical. Brilliant, glamorous, and spirited, she was a devoted activist and intellectual for over half a century, until kidney cancer cut short her life on October 13.

From the earliest days of the women’s liberation movement, she was a leader — active in New York Radical Women, Redstockings, No More Nice Girls, the abortion and reproductive rights movements, and more. In 1967, as a new mother and a staffer of Mobilization for Youth, she helped create Liberation Nursery, the first feminist day care center in New York.

Ros’s activism deeply infused her professional life writing and teaching about women’s history, especially the history of women in the American left and labor movements. She read voraciously and wrote quite a bit too. America’s Working Women, the book she coedited with Linda Gordon and Susan Reverby, is a classic; her work on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Words on Fire, is another.