Re-Feminist History - badass women in history

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Crystal Eastman, co-founder of the ACLU and feminist supreme!


Last week I told you about Alice Paul and how she was a massive contributor to the success of the 19th amendment and other women's rights battles.  One of her cohorts and co-author of the ERA was Crystal Eastman. 

To start, here's a few quotes by Eastman that I really love: 

"A good deal of tyranny goes by the name of protection." (this one really hits me, especially in light of current events in the USA)

"If I had my way…we would tell the men of this country we were not going to work any more [sic], we were not going to contribute or to assist them with anything until they gave us a share in the government of the country…If this strike were possible I am willing to wager that women would be given the ballot within several hours." (ADDRESS TO THE NEW YORK EQUAL FRANCHISE ASSOCIATION, DECEMBER 1910)

"I believe women have a great deal more mechanical ability than they have been credited with, but naturally when they are allowed to practice with needles and egg beaters [sic] only they can’t show what they could do with a monkey wrench." (NEW YORK TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 19, 1914)

And, here's some quotes about her: 

“Crystal Eastman’s determination to breathe life into the Bill of Rights in 1920 provided the nation with the first chapter in the story of the ACLU,” said Nadine Strossen, National President of the ACLU. “Her courageous struggle to realize equal rights for all is carried on in the work of the ACLU today, reminding us that no fight for liberty ever stays won.”

ACLU co-founder Roger Baldwin remembered Eastman as “a natural leader: outspoken (often tactless), determined, charming, beautiful, courageous,”


Crystal Eastman was born in Glenora, New York in 1881 to ordained ministers of the Congregational Church. She graduated from Vassar in 1903, received a Masters in sociology from Columbia, and got a law degree from New York University for Law in 1907 (2nd in her class, I might add). 
 
"Her first job as an attorney was to investigate labor conditions for the Russell Sage Foundation. Her pioneering report, Work Accidents and the Law (1910), led New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes to appoint her the first woman on New York State’s Commission on Employers’ Liability and Causes of Industrial Accidents, Unemployment and Lack of Farm Labor. As a member of that commission, Eastman drafted the country’s first workers’ compensation law. That legislation became the model for workers’ compensation throughout the nation. Then, during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, Eastman became investigating attorney for the United States Commission on Industrial Relations." (https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/crystal-eastman/)

At the same time, she was also working hard to further women’s rights. Suffrage, or voting rights, came first, and then equal rights.   "During the First World War, she was a leader of the peace movement, working with Carrie Chapman Catt to organize the Carnegie Hall meeting that led to the founding of the Woman’s Peace Party of New York -later renamed the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom – the oldest women’s peace organization. Eastman became Executive Secretary of the Women’s Peace Party." (https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/crystal-eastman/)

She was a brilliant speaker and writer, and she campaigned throughout her life for peace, equal rights, and civil liberties.  She moved listeners and crowds both large and small. Her voice and her strength were fundamental in the success of many civil rights and women's rights campaigns between 1909-1920.  She died in 1928, but not without a huge number of accomplishments and contributions to American society. She was, notably, an active member of the communist party as well.  If you've been listening to Bitchstory/Refeminist History for a while, you probably know that communism at the beginning of the 20th century was key in forming labor unions and other organizations.  I think that's why the Republican party is so anti-union...because of its roots in the communist party.  But remember, communism as a construct, concept and philosophy, did not entail authoritarianism.  The countries that adopted communism and failed are the same ones that were totalitarian and authoritarian, and fascist. In the US where we have been fed anti communist propaganda for decades, it's still hard to intellectually separate those 2 concepts. I only add this because I think we can experience some cognitive dissonance when we learn a She-ro was a "commie".  I also find myself frustrated when people conflate communism with socialism. They are quite different. The USA has many socialist institutions baked into its structure already. All of that notwithstanding, you will probably notice around 1918 where Crystal may have overstepped and the US said, um...no.  Perhaps that is why she "disappeared from history" for about 50 years...years that coincided with America's red scare and cold wars.  In 2000, In 2000, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York.

But I digress, as usual.  Below is a timeline of Crystal Eastmans's accomplishments and activities: 


Timeline (from https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-crystal-eastman)

1909 -  Eastman gains fame for her investigative work, on behalf of the Russell Sage Foundation, in the Pittsburg Survey which exposed working conditions and injuries among workers in the city. Her work prompts the Governor of New York to appoint her to a statewide commission studying the causes of unemployment.

1913 - Eastman joins the newly founded Congressional Union, an organization devoted to women’s suffrage. President Wilson also appoints her to the Commission on Industrial Relations.

1914  - Maxwell Motor Company makes her a saleswoman as part of a strategy to boost interest among women.

1915  - Eastman urges rights for women, including financial benefits for contributions to the home and birth control. The Woman’s Peace Party, led by Jane Addams, also forms, and Eastman becomes a prominent member as the war wages on.

1916  - Eastman’s involvement with the Woman’s Peace Party increases. Eastman also divorces her husband Wallace Benedict and refuses alimony on feminist grounds.

1917  - Wartime restrictions on civil liberties agitate Eastman and other activists, including Roger Baldwin, who could not express their anti-war platform. They form the National Civil Liberties Bureau to defend their rights.

1918 - Eastman calls for the U.S. to recognize the Bolshevik government and becomes the managing editor of her brother’s new publication, “The Liberator,” after his old magazine was shut down under the Espionage Act.

1919 - Eastman expresses wish that United States will follow Russia in becoming a socialist republic and calling her passport into question.

1920 - The National Civil Liberties Bureau reorganizes into the American Civil Liberties Union with Eastman on the national committee.

You might recall that the 19th Amendment became part of the constitution in 1920.  That was a big year for civil rights and for women in general.  The US was in a post-war era of expansion and celebration and of course, the roaring 20's took hold.  Women were shortening their skirts, cutting their hair, showing off their shoulders and other scandalous body parts, like...knees...and generally rebelling after decades of bustles and corsets and being held back.  Women like Crystal Eastman were a huge part of those forward strides.  This is my favorite photo of Eastman...

In 1916, she remarried, this time to the British editor and antiwar activist Walter Fuller.   They had two children.  Eastman chose to keep her last name, and had some other unconventional aspects to her personal life.  In a publication in 1923 titled "Marriage Under Two Roofs", she revealed that she and her husband had separate residences.  This caused quite the uproar.  She said that their arrangement nurtured a more authentic expression of love and desire and therefore a happier family unit.  (Where is the movie about this woman?!)  

I find this tidbit to be delightful, because I joked for years before I met my 2nd husband that I didn't care about getting remarried, and I'd be perfectly happy to live next door or down the street from my partner.  Well he lives on the other side of the world most of the year, but it works for us.  

But anyway...Crystal and Walter worked together as activists until the end of the war; then he worked as the managing editor of The Freeman until 1922, when he returned to London, England. For eight years, Eastman traveled by ship between London and New York to be with her husband.Walter died in 1927 from a stroke, and she died a year later (kidney disease). Their orphaned children were entrusted to close friends.

The ACLU is still a crucial organization that helps protect people's constitutional rights, and is part of her living legacy. 


And that's it for another entry in the encyclopedia of  badass women! See you next week!