Eastman, Crystal (1881–1928), labor lawyer, feminist, antimilitarist.Born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, the daughter of two ordained Congregationalist ministers, Eastman was raised in Glenora, New York, graduated from Vassar College, earned an M.A. in sociology at Columbia and a law degree from New York University in 1907. A labor lawyer and reformer, Eastman's first book, Work Accidents and the Law (1910), established her reputation and helped create workmen's compensation. A brilliant and dynamic activist, Eastman was a committed socialist, suffragist, feminist, and antimilitarist. She believed military establishments and wars defended business interests and threatened the values she most cherished. In 1914, she was one of the founders of the Woman's Peace Party (later the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom) and became president of the radical New York branch (1914–19). She also served as executive director of the American Union Against Militarism (1915–17) and helped commit its wartime successor, the National Civil Liberties Bureau (1917–18), to the protection of conscientious objection and free speech. After the war, she organized the First Feminist Congress in 1919, and helped found the American Civil Liberties Bureau in 1921 (renamed the American Civil Liberties Union in 1923). From 1918 to 1922, with her brother, Max Eastman, she co‐owned and coedited the Liberator, a radical journal of politics, art, and literature. Until her death in 1928 of nephritis at forty‐eight, Eastman worked tirelessly for feminism, social justice, and world peace.
[See also Peace and Antiwar Movements.]

Bibliography

Blanche Wiesen Cook, ed., Toward the Great Change: Crystal and Max Eastman on Feminism, Antimilitarism, and Revolution, 1976.
Blanche Wiesen Cook, ed., Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution, 1978.

Blanche Wiesen Cook