Robin Morgan, a prominent child star of the 1940s and 1950s who later evolved into a radical poet, essayist, editor, and leading figure of second-wave feminism, has passed away at the age of 85.
The Women’s Media Center, which Morgan co-founded alongside Jane Fonda and renowned activist Gloria Steinem, confirmed her passing on Saturday.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Morgan was a driving force behind transformative shifts in how women lived, thought, and advocated for themselves. Often proudly recalling her past as the quintessential “ideal American girl” and beloved child star “little Robin Morgan,” she embraced her identity as a passionate rule-breaker and seeker of justice. Her legacy was marked by monumental achievements, but also by a criminal record and an active FBI file due to her radical activism.
Julie Burton, president of the Women’s Media Center, described Morgan as “one of the architects of the contemporary women’s movement,” praising her profound writing and “global leadership for justice and equality.” The announcement did not specify the location, date, or cause of death.
Morgan stood at the heart of several defining moments of second-wave feminism, building upon the milestones achieved by suffragists half a century prior. In 1968, she helped organize the historic first protest against the Miss America pageant, where she and fellow activists symbolically discarded their bras into a “freedom trash can”—an event soon mythologized as a bra-burning incident. The groundbreaking 1970 essay anthology she edited, *Sisterhood Is Powerful*, remains one of the foundational texts of the modern feminist movement.
Morgan’s enduring legacy is woven from her actions, her powerful words, and the imagery of an era in flux. She is widely credited with coining the term “herstory” to describe a feminist reworking of traditional history, and she popularized the iconic clenched-fist-meets-female-symbol emblem of the liberation movement. Her passionate poem *Monster*, featuring lines like “I want a women’s revolution like a lover/I lust for it,” became a staple at feminist rallies. Additionally, her poem *Arraignment* captured the movement’s deep reverence for Sylvia Plath and sharp condemnation of her husband, poet Ted Hughes, whom Morgan and others held responsible for Plath’s 1963 suicide. Her impactful rhyming couplet, “I accuse/Ted Hughes,” even inspired the title of Sonic Youth’s song “J’Accuse Ted Hughes.”
Labeled an “anarchist housewife” in a government report, Morgan was known for confronting the establishment across the political spectrum. In 1970, she and fellow activists were arrested and jailed after occupying the offices of the avant-garde publisher Grove Press during a labor dispute. In her widely reprinted 1970 essay, *Goodbye to All That*, she candidly critiqued a diverse array of figures, from Abbie Hoffman and Hugh Hefner to Dave Dellinger and the music group the Fugs.
In her personal life, Morgan embraced a broad spectrum of relationships, having both male and female lovers. She was married for over 20 years to the gay poet Kenneth Pitchford, with whom she had a son, Blake Morgan, who became a musician, activist, and record executive. She famously described her marriage as a “two-member commune” and resisted rigid sexual labels, recalling being “straight-baited” by feminists who assumed she should be a lesbian, while simultaneously facing condemnation from conservatives who made the same assumption.
In her 2001 memoir, *Saturday’s Child*, she expressed deep joy and amazement at the trajectory of her life, marveling at how she managed to retain “a threadbare, somewhat surreal sense of humor” through it all.
“Put that in your apple pie and smoke it,” she wryly wrote.
In addition to *Saturday’s Child*, Morgan authored more than 20 books, including *The Word of a Woman: Feminists Dispatches* and the poetry collections *Monster* and *Dark Matter*. She followed up her seminal anthology *Sisterhood Is Powerful* with *Sisterhood Is Global* (1984) and *Sisterhood Is Forever* (2002), which featured contributions from prominent figures like Gloria Steinem, Simone de Beauvoir, and Eve Ensler. She also served for several years as the editor-in-chief of *Ms.* magazine.
In 1984, she co-founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute, an early feminist think tank. In 2005, alongside Steinem and Jane Fonda, she launched the Women’s Media Center, an organization dedicated to supporting “the visibility, viability and decision-making power of women and girls in media.”
In her later years, she hosted a syndicated radio show and remained a vibrant public presence despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which inspired several poems and a TEDWomen talk in 2015.
In a different era, she might have remained just another forgotten child star. Born in 1941 in Lake Worth, Florida, and raised in New York, she never saw her father during her childhood and was falsely told by her mother that he was deceased. Her mother also altered her birth year, claiming she was born in 1942 to make her early public career appear even more precocious.
As a child, she rubbed shoulders with some of the era’s biggest stars, from Abbott and Costello to Sal Mineo, and her popularity inspired commercial tie-ins like Robin Morgan dolls. Magazines of the time described her as “unspoiled,” “courteous,” and “the ideal girl-next-door,” praising her apparent immunity from “violent outbursts of antagonism against established society.”
As she recalled in *Saturday’s Child*, producer Dan Ehrenreich squeezed her shoulder so hard she could feel his fingernails, turned her microphone away, and eventually placed his hand over her mouth.
“I realized that I loved and respected that child who fought back in what was the first political act I recall ever daring to make,” she wrote.