Crystal Catherine Eastman

Born: 1881

Died: 1928

Country of Birth: USA

Nationality: USA

Ethnicity: White

Vassar College BA 1903; Columbia University MA Sociology 1904; NYU Law School 1907

"“Life [is] a big battle for the complete feminist,” (vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu); at age 15 wrote her 1st feminist paper entitled Women and wrote, “…the only way to be happy is to have an absorbing interest in life which is not bound up with any particular person. No woman who allows husband and children to absorb her whole time and interest is safe against disaster.” (vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu); “I love [New York] so for the people that are there and the thousands of things they do and think about. Of course I don’t mean the rich ones that drive up and down Fifth Ave., nor the very poor ones, who merely make me sad. But all the interesting between ones who really know how to live,—who are working hard at something all the time; and especially the radicals, the reformers, the students,—who really live to help, and yet get so much fun out of it,—because they are open-minded, and eager over every new movement, and because they know when it is right for them to let go and amuse themselves and because they can laugh, even at themselves. It seems to me there are so many more of such people in New York than anywhere else.” (vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu); "What, then, is "the matter with women"? What is the problem of women's freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of activity -housework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose housework and child-raising, to have that occupation recognized by the world as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the performer to be dependent on some man." (awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu); ""Birth control" is just as elementary an essential in our propaganda as "equal pay." Women are to have children when they want them, that's the first thing. That ensures some freedom of occupational choice; those who do not wish to be mothers will not have an undesired occupation thrust upon them by accident, and those who do wish to be mothers may choose in a general way how many years of their lives they will devote to the occupation of childraising." (awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu); "I am not interested in women just because they're women. I am interested, however, in seeing that they are no longer classed with children and minors." (thoughtco.com); "

— Crystal Catherine Eastman

Field of Study: Law

Institution/Corporation: ACLU

Degrees & Memberships: Member: National women's Party, Women's International League for Peace & Freedom, women's Peace Party, American Union Against Militarism, National Civil Liberties Bureau (now American Civil Liberties Union)

Awards: 2000 National Women's Hall of Fame

Achievements: co-founder and co-editor with her brother Max Eastman of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator (1918-1922); co-founder of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and co-founder in 1920 of the American Civil Liberties Union; 1909 was appointed to the New York State Commission of Employee's Liability and Causes of Industrial Accidents, Unemployment and Lack of Farm Labor & drafted the inaugural workers' compensation law, a model that became the standard for the U.S.; advocated for "motherhood endowments" whereby mothers of young children would receive monetary benefits; 1913 co-founded Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage, which became the National Woman's Party; co-wrote the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), first introduced in 1923; delivered the speech, "Now We Can Begin", following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, outlining the work that needed to be done in the political and economic spheres to achieve gender equality; organized the First Feminist Congress in 1919; 1909 helped her brother Max establish the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage; co-founder American Union Against Militarism