Recovering the "Most Neglected Feminist Leader of the Twentieth Century": Crystal Eastman, Historical Memory, and the Bequest of an Intersectional Inheritance

At the time of her death in 1928, Crystal Eastman was one of the most conspicuous political women in the United States. A cofounder of the National Woman's Party, the Woman's Peace Party, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Eastman also drafted the nation's first serious workers' compensation law and has been credited as a coauthor of the Equal Rights Amendment. Yet nearly a century later, her legacy is oddly ambiguous. Over time, she has become a strangely elided figure—commemorated, paradoxically, as one of the most neglected feminist leaders in American history. This article explores Eastman's political identity, connecting it to the question of her complex legacy in historical memory today. I argue it was her intersectional imperative—her drive to bridge multiple social justice movements all under one emancipatory rubric—that destabilized her historical standing and intelligibility. By reexamining her public life and career in light of new sources and frameworks, I aim to redefine the transgressive nature of her politics for a new generation of women's studies scholars.