Although the early ACLU did include women in many capacities, the organization did not immediately set out to promote women’s rights. That position corresponded with the preference of most 1920 suffragists, who regarded the passage of the 19th Amendment as having achieved their goal and who feared that any declaration of equality might undermine hard-won protectionist legislation.
Crystal Eastman disagreed. “A good deal of tyranny,” she said, “goes by the name of protection.” Her 1920 speech, “Now We Can Begin,” is listed by the American Rhetoric website as number 83 of the 100 most influential American speeches of all time and is still anthologized in histories of women’s rights. Eastman and Alice Paul wrote and promoted the Equal Rights Amendment, first introduced in Congress in 1923 and finally approved by Congress in 1972 — although never ratified by a sufficient number of states. “The very passion with which it is opposed,” Eastman remarked, “suggests that it is vital.”
The ACLU eventually decided to support the Equal Rights Amendment in 1970, when Dorothy Kenyon, the organization’s groundbreaking women’s rights activist and board member, changed her mind and advocated support. Eastman said almost a century ago, “This is a fight worth fighting even if it takes ten years.” Even today, after so many decades, the ACLU is still involved in the battle over ratification of the ERA, as well as a vibrant women’s rights docket Eastman would have admired.
Eastman’s concept of civil liberties was broader than the fledgling ACLU’s in other ways, too. She was an early advocate for birth control, legalization of prostitution (at a time when alleged prostitutes but not their patrons were prosecuted), and economic support for mothers and children. She believed international collaboration on civil liberties issues to be essential, as did Roger Baldwin. But the ACLU board disagreed and limited the ACLU’s mandate to domestic civil liberties.
Eastman’s departure from the ACLU in 1921 was attributed to her poor health. But there were certainly other contributing factors. For one thing, she needed to earn a living. Blacklisted in 1919-20, she was unable to find enough paying work in New York, especially after The Liberator — the magazine she and her brother, Max, started in 1918 to replace The Masses — was taken over by new management and became a Communist Party organ.