25 Facts About Crystal Eastman

Crystal Catherine Eastman was an American lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist.

Crystal Eastman was a leader in the fight for women's suffrage, a co-founder and co-editor with her brother Max Eastman of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator, co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder in 1920 of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Crystal Eastman was born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, on June 25,1881, the third of four children.

Crystal Eastman's oldest brother, Morgan, was born in 1878 and died in 1884.

Crystal Eastman's father was a Congregational minister, and the two served as pastors at the church of Thomas K Beecher near Elmira.

Mark Twain's family attended the church and it was this shared association that young Crystal Eastman became acquainted with him.

Crystal Eastman became a socialist activist early on, and Crystal had several common causes with him.

Crystal Eastman graduated from Vassar College in 1903 and received a Master of Arts degree in sociology from Columbia University in 1904.

Crystal Eastman then attended New York University Law School, graduating in 1907 as the second in her class.

Crystal Eastman advocated for "motherhood endowments" whereby mothers of young children would receive monetary benefits.

Crystal Eastman argued it would reduce forced dependence of mothers on men, as well as economically empower women.

Wallace J Benedict was an insurance agent in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and so when Eastman married him in 1911, she moved there after the wedding.

One of the few socialists to endorse the ERA, Crystal Eastman warned that protective legislation for women would mean only discrimination against women.

Crystal Eastman claimed that one could assess the importance of the ERA by the intensity of the opposition to it.

Crystal Eastman 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.

Crystal Eastman served as president of the New York City branch.

Crystal Eastman became executive director of the American Union Against Militarism, which lobbied against America's entrance into the European war and more successfully against war with Mexico in 1916.

In 1916, Crystal Eastman married the British editor and antiwar activist Walter Fuller, who had come to the United States to direct his sisters' singing of folksongs.

The publication of her 1923 confessional article titled Marriage Under Two Roofs caused an uproar as Crystal Eastman revealed the specifics of their unconventional living arrangement.

For eight years, Crystal Eastman traveled by ship between London and New York to be with her husband.

Crystal 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.

Crystal Eastman died at age 47, on July 8,1928, of nephritis, a year after her husband had passed.

Crystal 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.

Crystal Eastman was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be.

In 2000, Crystal Eastman was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.