Born December 6, 1936
New York, New York

Author, poet, feminist activist, and teacher

Margaret Randall made headlines in 1985 when she was ordered to leave the United States under a McCarthy-era statute called the McCarran-Walter Act. The Immigration and Naturalization Service claimed that Randall had renounced her U.S. citizenship by accepting Mexican citizenship in the 1960s. The agency sought to deport Randall because her writings were deemed to “advocate the economic, international and governmental doctrines of world communism.” In 1989 Randall’s U.S. citizenship was restored by the Immigration Appeals Board, and the motion to deport her was dismissed.

Grows up in New York and New Mexico

Randall was born to an upper-middle-class family in New York City on December 6, 1936. Her parents were world travelers with a penchant for unconventional and countercultural people and places. When Randall was in sixth grade, her family moved...