[4] At that point, Traxler, who had returned to using her baptismal name, began devoting herself to advocacy on behalf of interracial justice and the rights of women in society and in the Catholic Church,[4] She took part in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, singing "We Shall Overcome".

[3] During this period, she and 12 other nuns marched in the front row of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Selma to Montgomery marches, and she also worked with King to organize "traveling workshops" of Sister-scholars to assist schools preparing for integration, and establish a program to place Religious Sisters in African-American colleges to allow the regular faculty to pursue advanced degrees.

Other notable activities included attending the peace negotiations in Paris, France, for ending the Vietnam War, organizing the NCCIJ's Citizen's Task Force of Inquiry regarding Civil Liberties in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and co-founding the National Coalition of American Nuns and the National Interreligious Task Force on Soviet Jewry, for which she received an award from the Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir.

[8] In 1984 Traxler was one of 26 Religious Sisters who signed their names to an advertisement in The New York Times entitled "A Catholic Statement on Pluralism and Abortion".

Under the aegis of the IWT, she organized skilled workers and lawyers to travel to women's prisons in Illinois to provide training and advice.

[5] Traxler suffered a debilitating stroke in 2000 that ended her public work, and retired to the infirmary at the Provincial Motherhouse of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Mankato, Minnesota.