Crystal Eastman, Greenwich Village’s Suffragist Lawyer

From the domestic sphere to politics, Crystal Eastman challenged many fundamental elements of women’s roles in early twentieth century American culture. She was a trained lawyer, outspoken pacifist, fair labor law advocate, suffragist, and one of the original founders of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

Born in 1881 in Marlborough, Massachusetts, Eastman spent most of her childhood in upstate New York, before later moving to New York City as an adult and settling in Greenwich Village. Crystal and her brother Max (whom she lived with for several years in Greenwich Village) were both heavily influenced by their mother, a Congregationalist minister and a fierce advocate for gender equity, especially when it came to men and women sharing equal domestic labor. This idea of private, domestic inequality informing broader cultural norms and public policy was one that Eastman centered in her personal philosophy throughout her life. 

237 West 11th Street (left) and 118 Waverly Place (right), two buildings in which Crystal and Max Eastman lived in the 1910s.

After completing her bachelor’s degree at Vassar, Eastman moved to New York City, where she earned her MA in Sociology from Columbia University in 1904. She then went on to study law at New York University, where she graduated second in her class in 1907. Despite being qualified to practice law, Eastman found that no firm would hire her because she was a woman. 

Undeterred, she turned her attention to one of the most pressing issues in law during the early twentieth century — workers’ rights. She began conducting comprehensive studies on job-related accidents and compensation, publishing a book on her findings titled ‘Work Accidents and the Law’ in 1910. Her accomplishments led her to be elected to the New York Employers’ Liability Commission, where she drafted a law that allowed workers to receive compensation for injuries incurred on the job without having to prove that their employers were at fault. 

Eastman gained international acclaim for her book and her work in the New York State legislature. Despite her continued success, she still could not practice law. Instead she applied her knowledge and passion to writing. She co-founded The Liberator with her brother Max Eastman in 1917. The magazine covered a wide range of social issues, including the Russian Revolution, birth control, women’s suffrage, and women’s work both inside and outside the home. The latter two subjects were particularly important to both siblings. 

The following is an excerpt from an essay Eastman wrote after the 19th Amendment was ratified: 

“A growing number of men admire the woman who has a job, and, especially since the cost of living doubled, rather like the idea of their own wives contributing to the family income by outside work…But these bread-winning wives have not yet developed homemaking husbands. When the two come home from the factory the man sits down while his wife gets supper, and he does so with exactly the same sense of fore-ordained right as if he were “supporting her”… The business or professional woman who is married, perhaps engages a cook, but the responsibility is not shifted, it is still hers…She may be, like her husband, a busy executive at her office all day, but unlike him, she is also an executive in a small way every night and morning at home.”

— Crystal Eastman, “Now We Can Begin,” The Liberator, 1920

Eastman also wrote for Heterodoxy, the official magazine of the Heterodoxy Club, which met inside Polly’s Cafe on 135 MacDougal Street. The club was composed of progressive women of many viewpoints and political persuasions (hence the name), including Helen Keller and labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Eastman had broad interests, so the Heterodoxy Club was the perfect place for her to engage in productive debate with fellow feminist intellectuals and activists. Her connections in the club allowed her to further her leadership within the feminist movement and establish the Women’s Peace Party, which exists today as the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Among her broad interests were specific issues: women’s constitutional right to vote and a pacifist opposition to United States involvement in World War I. These issues led Eastman to join forces with other activists and co-found the ACLU in 1920. Unfortunately she was blacklisted from working that same year due to her ties to socialism. She made her living by continuing to write for feminist publications during the final years of her life. 

Eastman died of a kidney infection in 1928 at age 48. Her activist brother would live another forty years, establishing his legacy as the preeminent activist of the Eastman family. Though her legacy is now somewhat obscure, Crystal’s contributions to human rights causes remain relevant to this day.

To learn more about women’s history in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and Noho, check out our Women’s Suffrage History Map and our Civil Rights and Social Justice map.