Linda Freya Zeidman, long-time professor at the Community College of Baltimore County, died peacefully at her retirement community in Springfield, Oregon on November 14, 2019; she was 75. Her daughter, Ann Zeidman-Karpinski, a librarian at the University of Oregon, gave the cause of death as complications from Parkinson’s disease.

A native New Yorker, Linda studied European social history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was active in the civil rights, anti-war, and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s. While a graduate student there, she was an organizer for the first teaching assistant unions in the country, the Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA). These experiences culminated in the decision to move to Baltimore with her then husband, Edward Zeidman, and their new-born daughter. They were part of an urban community-organizing collective of UW graduates that selected Baltimore because of its strong working-class character.

Arriving in the summer of 1970, the group moved into a large house with two carriage houses on Federal Hill, then a “distressed neighborhood.” Most found jobs as teachers in the rapidly growing community colleges while also becoming immersed in radical urban struggles. One of their first projects was in journalism: they put out a neighborhood newspaper, The South Baltimore Voice, which celebrated the lives in this working class community through stories and photos while shining a spotlight on the political issues facing the community.”. “They seemed to know everyone living within several blocks of their home,” reminisces Kostis Papadantonakis, a colleague and friend of the family, who moved into their neighborhood three years later. “Their collectively prepared dinners (to which I was fortunate to be invited) usually ended up in intense seminars on current affairs, with Linda frequently extrapolating from her all-time favorite historical subject: the French Revolution.”

Linda’s job as a History instructor at Essex Community College made it easy for her to teach about the French Revolution and many other revolutions as well. Later, she enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University and “retooled” as an Economics instructor at Essex. A few years on, she was one of the faculty members who pioneered the now thriving Women’s Studies program there. “For those of us who were fortunate enough to work with her, her passing is not a moment for mourning but for remembering Linda’s many contributions to the College and her passion for fighting against the ills of society through education,” wrote Timothy Davis, Dean of the School of Wellness, Behavioral and Social Sciences at the Community College of Baltimore County of which Essex is now a campus.

Her work outside the college matched her educator’s skills with her social convictions. She was a founding member of the Progressive Action Center, which was established in a repurposed public library building near City College and served as a hub for progressive organizations such as the Women’s Union of Baltimore, Research Associates Foundation, and the Alternative Media Center. Her community work linked her to the United Steel Workers local, where she helped establish a free adult education program in which she taught for several years.

As part of her scholarly work, Linda embarked on an oral history project with Stan Markowitz, an Essex faculty colleague and friend, interviewing steelworkers and their families. They documented life at Sparrows Point when it was a Bethlehem Steel company town, as well as memories of working in the blast furnaces before the plant closed down. That project led to a number of published essays, a large photo-poster travelling collection, and a full-feature documentary with interviews and historic photographs about life and work at Sparrow’s Point. Steeped in Baltimore’s history as a working-class city, Linda convinced Linda Shopes, Elizabeth Fee, and others, including Sylvia Gillett, to develop a Baltimore by Bus tour. That project turned into co-editing and co-authoring with other local activist/scholars The Baltimore Book (Temple University Press), with chapters on place based struggles for labor rights and racial justice in Baltimore.

Proudly (but not rigidly) iconoclastic and Marxist, Linda did not hesitate to challenge preconceived notions whether in political matters or in people’s perceptions about disabilities.  Confronted with the early onset of Parkinson’s disease in her 40s, Linda embraced the challenge without complaint and never let it define or limit her.  She expected others to do likewise.  One example:  Ever the provocateur, Linda organized a “shake it up baby” dance group in Baltimore for people with Parkinson’s.

Linda Freya Gottlieb was born in New York City on November 8, 1944, the only child of Rose and Boris Gottlieb. Her parents were both immigrants and, except for an aunt who emigrated to British-occupied Palestine in the 1930s, all the family on her father’s side were murdered in the Ukraine. “Linda lived with the echoes of the Nazi nightmare and stories of her relatives who were shot and buried in the mass graves of Babi Yar,” says Ken Locke, who first met Linda when he started working as a therapist at the nearby Inner City Community Mental Health Center. “She spent the last years of her life trying to gather and piece together the events, personal histories, memories, old letters, as well as the effects of Babi Yar upon those like her parents who survived the killing but not the nightmare, … like herself.”

While Linda’s intellectual, academic and analytical talents were widely recognized, in midlife she revealed artistic talents that floored even her closest friends.  Challenging and ultimately taming the progress of her early-onset Parkinson’s, she precariously wielded scissors to create paper-cut collages until the picture she had in mind materialized.  “And what works of art they were!,” notes long-time friend and fellow UW/South Baltimore commune member Elliot Lieberman.  “Whether of Babi Yar or of the New York skyline from a cemetery in Brooklyn where family members were buried, they exuded vibrant color, beauty and emotion.”  Linda mounted an exhibit of her collages at a gallery in Baltimore a few years before she relocated to Oregon.  In Eugene, she was an active member of several art groups, working in pen and watercolor with impressive results.

Her youthful experiences in Wisconsin reinforced the “Babi Yar roots,” as she called them, and informed her social commitment in every aspect of her work and creative life. She is survived by her daughter Annie, her beloved son-in-law Seth Karpinski, and her grandchildren Boris and Zara and many members of her community of lantzman, friends she collected throughout her life.

We will have a Baltimore gathering, in person, when conditions allow.

In memoriam notice for Linda’s yahrzeit.