Born today in 1881, Crystal Eastman is likely the most important radical you’ve never heard of.

…and most dominant histories are written from a pretty conservative perspective, hostile to radical politics.

It’s little surprise, then, that the wondrous life of Crystal Eastman (1881-1928) remains a mystery to most Americans, despite her being one of the most significant political leaders of the early-20 ^th century.

Born in Massachusetts, 139 years ago today, Crystal was the third child in a family of progressive clergy (her mom, Annis, was one of the first women ministers ordained in the US).

Crystal and her brother, Max, embraced radical politics from a young age, living together in the Bohemian scene of Greenwich Village as students, the area which much later became the backdrop to the Stonewall Riots of 1969.

Fiercely intelligent, Crystal earned herself an MA in Sociology and a law degree.

In 1907, she set out into the world, eager to change it.

Wasting no time, Eastman found work as a social researcher in Pittsburgh, writing a groundbreaking report in 1910 titled Work Accidents and the Law.

Crystal’s report took apart the injustice of existing labor law, which put impossible burdens on the injured worker to prove their employer’s liability.

The impact of Eastman’s report was massive, triggering a wave of new workers’ compensation laws across the US which would improve the lives of millions of American laborers.

Crystal was also a major player in the women’s suffrage movement during its decisive decade.

She managed the unsuccessful 1912 campaign for the vote in Wisconsin – a defeat which convinced Eastman that a constitutional amendment was the way to win.

To this end, and alongside other leading feminists like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, Crystal founded the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (later the National Woman’s Party) in 1913.

Over the next decade, Eastman’s group spearheaded the push for the 19th Amendment.

But when the Amendment was at last ratified – a hundred years ago this August – Crystal steered well clear of triumphalism.

Speaking in December 1920, Crystal observed,

Crystal Eastman was a socialist, so her idea of freedom went beyond formal political equality for women to challenge the economic obstacles hindering poor women and the wider working class.

For her, the 19 ^th Amendment was meant to encourage, not satisfy.

Feminism without socialism was insufficient.

In her socialist work during the WW1 years, Crystal Eastman helped achieve another great moment of US radical history – the creation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

When Woodrow Wilson hurled America into the European conflict, he introduced the despotic Espionage Act at home.

Trampling all over the First Amendment, this law effectively outlawed criticism of the war.

Hundreds of anti-war socialists and anarchists – including national figures like Eugene Debs and Emma Goldman – were thrown in jail.

Against this reactionary tide, Crystal Eastman stood firm and used her lawyerly skills to cofound the National Civil Liberties Bureau (which would in 1920 become the ACLU).

Providing legal representation to the persecuted anti-war activists, the Bureau was meant, in Crystal’s words,

After her death in 1928, Crystal Eastman was pushed out of American memory.

She’s an inconvenient detail for many, from those who want to paint first-wave feminism as more moderate than it really was, to those who want to cast US socialism as male-only.

But the American saga makes no sense without Crystal, from the ACLU, which continues to do such good work today, to her socialist women successors like Ilhan Omar and AOC.

Because she’s so banished from our history, sharing Crystal Eastman’s radical story is a powerful act – pass it on!