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Crystal Eastman | |
|---|---|
 Eastman, c. 1914 | |
| Born | Crystal Catherine Eastman June 25, 1881 Marlborough, Massachusetts, United States |
| Died | July 8, 1928(1928-07-08) (aged 47) Erie, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Occupation | Lawyer |
| Known for | Feminism, socialism,Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage,The Liberator, and as a co-founder of both theWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom andAmerican Union Against Militarism |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | Jeffrey Fuller Annis Fuller |
| Parent(s) | Samuel Elijah Eastman Annis Bertha Ford |
| Relatives | Max Eastman (brother) |
Crystal Catherine Eastman (June 25, 1881 – July 28, 1928)[1][2] was an American lawyer,antimilitarist,feminist,socialist, and journalist. She was a leader in the fight forwomen's suffrage, a co-founder and co-editor with her brotherMax Eastman of the radical arts and politics magazineThe Liberator, co-founder of theWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder in 1920 of theAmerican Civil Liberties Union. In 2000, she was inducted into theNational Women's Hall of Fame inSeneca Falls, New York.
Crystal Eastman was born inMarlborough, Massachusetts, on June 25, 1881, the third of four children. Her oldest brother, Morgan, was born in 1878 and died in 1884. The second brother, Anstice Ford Eastman, who became a general surgeon, was born in 1878 and died in 1937.Max was the youngest, born in 1883.[3]
In 1883, their parents, Samuel Elijah Eastman andAnnis Bertha Ford, moved the family toCanandaigua, New York. In 1889, their mother became one of the first women ordained as aProtestant minister in America when she became a minister of theCongregational church.[4] Her father was also a Congregational minister, and the two served as pastors at the church ofThomas K. Beecher nearElmira.Mark Twain's family also attended the church[5] and it was this shared association that young Crystal also became acquainted with him.[5]
This part of New York was in the so-called "Burnt Over District." During theSecond Great Awakening earlier in the 19th century, its frontier had been a center of evangelizing and much religious excitement, which resulted in the founding of such beliefs asMillerism andMormonism. During the antebellum period, some were inspired by religious ideals to support such progressive social causes asabolitionism and theUnderground Railroad.[citation needed]
This humanitarian tradition influenced Crystal and her brotherMax Eastman. He became asocialist activist early on, and Crystal had several common causes with him. They were close throughout her life, even after he had become more conservative.[6]
The siblings lived together on 11th Street in New York City'sGreenwich Village among other radical activists for several years.[7] The group, includingIda Rauh,Inez Milholland,Floyd Dell, andDoris Stevens, also spent summers and weekends inCroton-on-Hudson, where Max bought a house in 1916.[8]
Eastman graduated fromVassar College in 1903 and received aMaster of Arts degree in sociology (then a relatively new field) fromColumbia University in 1904.[9] She then attendedNew York University Law School, graduating in 1907 as the second in her class.[9] While pursuing her graduate degree, Eastman worked nights as a recreation leader at the Greenwich House Settlement, where she encounteredPaul Underwood Kellogg.[9]
Social work pioneer and journal editorPaul Kellogg offered Eastman her first job: investigating labor conditions forThe Pittsburgh Survey.[9] Her report,Work Accidents and the Law (1910), became a crucial tool in the fight for occupation health and safety and an early weapon in the ongoing battle.[9] In 1909, JusticeHughes, who at the time was governor of New York, appointed Eastman to the New York State Commission of Employee's Liability and Causes of Industrial Accidents, Unemployment and Lack of Farm Labor.[2][9] The first woman to be appointed a commission member, she drafted the inauguralworkers' compensation law. This model became the standard for the U.S.[9] DuringWoodrow Wilson's presidency, she continued to campaign for occupational safety and health while working as an investigating attorney for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations from 1913 to 1914.[10] She advocated for "motherhood endowments" whereby mothers of young children would receive monetary benefits. She argued it would reduce forced dependence of mothers on men, as well as economically empower women.[11]
Wallace J. Benedict was an insurance agent inMilwaukee, Wisconsin, and so when Eastman married him in 1911, she moved there after the wedding.[10] There she managed the unsuccessful 1912Wisconsinsuffrage campaign.[6]
Divorcing in 1913, she returned east where she joinedAlice Paul,Lucy Burns, and others in founding the militantCongressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became theNational Woman's Party.[10][2] After the passage of the19th Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920, Eastman and Paul wrote theEqual Rights Amendment (ERA), first introduced in 1923.[2] One of the few socialists to endorse the ERA, Eastman warned that protective legislation for women would mean only discrimination against women.[2] Eastman claimed that one could assess the importance of the ERA by the intensity of the opposition to it. However, she felt that it was still a struggle worth fighting. She also delivered the speech "Now We Can Begin" after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment;it outlined the work that needed to be done in the political and economic spheres to achieve gender equality.
DuringWorld War I, Eastman was one of the founders of theWoman's Peace Party, soon joined byJane Addams,Lillian D. Wald, and others.[12] She served as president of the New York City branch.[9] Renamed theWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1921, it remains the oldest extant women's peace organization. Eastman also became executive director of theAmerican Union Against Militarism, which lobbied against America's entrance into the European war and more successfully against war with Mexico in 1916.[13] This group sought to remove profiteering from arms manufacturing and campaigned againstconscription, imperial adventures, andmilitary intervention.[13]
When the United States entered World War I, Eastman, together withRoger Baldwin andNorman Thomasorganized theNational Civil Liberties Bureau (NCLB) to protectconscientious objectors or, in her words: "To maintain something over here that will be worth coming back to when the weary war is over."[14] The NCLB grew into theAmerican Civil Liberties Union(ACLU), with Baldwin at the head and Eastman functioning as attorney-in-charge. Eastman is credited as a founding member of the ACLU, but her role as founder of the NCLB may have been largely ignored by posterity because of her personal differences with Baldwin.[15]
In 1916, Eastman married the British editor and antiwar activistWalter Fuller, who had come to the United States to direct his sisters' singing of folksongs.[16] They had two children,Jeffrey Fuller born in 1917 and Annis Fuller born in 1921.[5] Choosing to keep her last name, Eastman explored family practices aimed at fostering gender equality within the realms of marriage and family life.[5] The publication of her 1923 confessional article titledMarriage Under Two Roofs caused an uproar as Eastman revealed the specifics of their unconventional living arrangement.[5] She argues that residing in two separate residences is better than in one because by ultimately leading to an authentic expression of sexual desire and marital love, which in turn contributes to the overall happiness of the family unit.[5] Eastman and Walter worked together as activists until the end of the war, when he worked as the managing editor ofThe Freeman until 1922, when he returned toLondon, England. For eight years, Eastman traveled by ship between London and New York to be with her husband.[9] Walter died in 1927 from a stroke,[9] which ended his career of editingRadio Times for theBBC.[17]
After Max Eastman's periodicalThe Masses was forced to close by government censorship in 1917, he and Crystal co-founded a radical journal of politics, art, and literature: theLiberator, in early 1918.[6] She and Max co-edited it until they put it in the hands of faithful friends in 1922.[18]
After the war, Eastman organized theFirst Feminist Congress in 1919.[9] In New York, her activities led to her being blacklisted during theRed Scare of 1919–1920. During the 1920s, Eastman was a columnist forAlice Paul's feminist journal,Equal Rights, and the British feminist weekly publicationTime and Tide.[9] Eastman claimed that "life was a big battle for the complete feminist," but she was convinced that the complete feminist would someday achieve total victory.[9]
Crystal Eastman died at age 47, on July 8, 1928, ofnephritis, a year after her husband had passed.[9] Friends were entrusted with their two orphaned children, then seven and eleven years old, to rear them until adulthood.[citation needed]
Eastman has been called one of the most neglected leaders in the United States because although she wrote pioneering legislation and created long-lasting political organizations, she disappeared from history for 50 years.[15]Freda Kirchwey, the editor ofThe Nation, wrote at the time of her death, "When she spoke to people—whether it was to a small committee or a swarming crowd—hearts beat faster. She was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be."[15]
In 2000, Eastman was inducted into the (American)National Women's Hall of Fame inSeneca Falls, New York.
In 2018,The Socialist, the official publication of theSocialist Party USA, published the article "Remembering Socialist Feminist Crystal Eastman" by Lisa Petriello, which was written "on the 90th-year anniversary of her [Eastman's] death to bring her life and legacy once again to the public eye."[19]
Eastman's papers are housed atHarvard University.[20]
The Library of Congress has the following publications by Eastman in its collection, many of them published posthumously:
