EASTMAN, CRYSTAL
Crystal Eastman was a leading American writer, labor lawyer, and activist for WOMEN’S RIGHTS and for civil liberties. During her life she worked to improve working conditions for U.S. laborers, helped establish the AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU), and lobbied for the enactment of the EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT. In many of
her exploits she partnered with her younger
brother Max. Max Eastman gained fame as a
Marxist writer and journalist who later rejected
SOCIALISM and became a supporter of the viru-
lently anti-communist senator, JOSEPH
MCCARTHY. In contrast, Crystal Eastman was a
consistent supporter of socialist politics, the
suffragist movement, and feminism throughout
her life.
Eastman was born on June 25, 1881, in
Glenora,New York, to Samuel Eastman and Annis
Ford Eastman. Both her parents were ordained
church ministers and ardent believers in women’s
rights, beliefs that Eastman absorbed. In a 1927
autobiographical essay written for Nation maga-
zine, Eastman talked about her father’s support of
her mother’s goal of becoming a minister and his
support of Crystal when she decided to study law.
He even supported the rebellious Crystal when
she led her teenage friends in revolt against the
wearing of skirts and stockings as part of the
swimming attire of proper young ladies. Her
father knew that he would not want to wear a skirt
and stockings when he went swimming, she
wrote, so he could see why his daughter would not
want to either. Eastman also credited her mother
with encouraging Crystal and her two brothers to
be independent thinkers and to advocate for the
causes that were most important to them.
Eastman graduated from Vassar College in
1903 and earned a master’s degree in sociology
from Columbia University in 1904. She attended
New York City School of Law where she gradu-
ated second in her class in 1907. Until 1911,
Eastman lived in a Greenwich Village commune
that included her brother Max.
Paul Kellogg, social work advocate and edi-
tor of a publication called Charities and the
Commons, hired the young attorney as part of a
team charged with investigating conditions
among steel workers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylva-
nia. The resulting survey, published between
1909 and 1914, was a groundbreaking six-volume
study that was the first to combine the collection
of scientific data with management techniques.
Eastman’s portion of the survey, a report titled
Work Accidents and the Law, was published in
1910. The report, which focused on unsafe
working environments and the corruption of
officials and others, was a startling revelation to
many politicians and citizens. In 1909, Eastman
became the first woman appointed to the
Employer’s Liability Commission. In that role
she drafted the first workers’ compensation law
for the state of New York.
Eastman married Walter Benedict and
moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she
continued be involved in women’s suffrage
issues. Eastman eventually separated from her
husband and moved back to New York where
she became an investigating attorney for the U.S.
Commission on Industrial Relations in 1913.
That same year, Eastman, along with suffragist
ALICE PAUL and several others, helped to found
the militant Congressional Union for Woman
Suffrage that was a forerunner of the National
Woman’s Party. In 1915, Eastman joined over
three thousand women for a meeting in Wash-
ington, D.C., where they founded the Woman’s
Peace Party with famed social worker JANE
ADDAMS as chair. Eastman became president of
the New York branch of the party which, in
1921, was renamed the Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom. That organiza-
tion, which exists to this day, supports disar-
mament, women’s rights, civil liberties, and
