Robin Morgan

Robin Evonne Morgan was a poet, activist, and editor whose life spanned three acts — child celebrity, radical firebrand, and global feminist elder — and whose work permanently changed the landscape of American political and literary life. Born on January 29, 1941, in Lake Worth, Florida, and raised in New York, she stepped in front of a microphone before most children learn to read. By age five she was hosting her own nationally syndicated radio program, "The Little Robin Morgan Show," on WOR, and from 1949 to 1957 she won the hearts of millions as Dagmar in the beloved CBS television series "Mama." At twelve, she was named "The Ideal American Girl" by the National Federation of Women's Clubs — a title she would spend the rest of her life joyfully contradicting. The late 1950s brought a decisive turning point. Enrolling in poetry workshops at Columbia University, Morgan became swept up in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, finding in political action a purpose that no stage could offer. In 1962, she married the poet Kenneth Pitchford — what she called their "two-member commune" — and in 1969 their son Blake was born. By the decade's end, Morgan had become a founding voice of radical feminism. She helped organize the electrifying 1968 protest against the Miss America pageant, co-founded New York Radical Women and W.I.T.C.H., and in 1970 edited "Sisterhood Is Powerful," an anthology the New York Public Library would later cite among the 100 most influential books of the twentieth century. She is widely credited with coining the word "herstory" and designing the iconic feminist symbol — the clenched fist within the female circle. The decades that followed brought a cascade of books (more than twenty in all), the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, a celebrated memoir, "Saturday's Child" (2001), and two terms shaping Ms. Magazine, first as a contributing writer and then, from 1989 to 1994, as editor-in-chief. In 1984, she co-founded the Sisterhood Is Global Institute alongside Simone de Beauvoir, and in 2005 she joined Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem to launch the Women's Media Center, hosting its podcast in 110 countries well into her eighties — answering activists' calls at any hour and working through their crises alongside them. In 2013, Morgan disclosed that she had been living with Parkinson's disease since 2010, but she did not slow down. She retained, in her own words, "a threadbare, somewhat surreal sense of humor," and she kept writing, speaking, and organizing until the end. Robin Morgan died peacefully in her sleep on September 5, 2026, in Manhattan, New York. She was 85. The revolution she longed for like a lover is her living inheritance.