Crystal Catherine Eastman -LRB- June 25 , 1881 -- July 8 , 1928 -RRB- was a lawyer , antimilitarist , feminist , socialist , and journalist . She is best remembered as a leader in the fight for women 's right to vote , as a co-editor of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator , and as a co-founder of the Women 's International League for Peace and Freedom . Crystal Eastman was born in Marlborough , Massachusetts on June 25 , 1881 . Her parents , Samuel Elijah Eastman and Annis Bertha Ford , were both Congregational Church clergy , and together served as pastors at the church of Thomas K. Beecher near Elmira , New York . In 1889 , her mother had become one of the first women ordained as a Protestant minister in America when she was ordained by the Congregationalist Church in the late 1880s . This part of New York was in the so-called `` Burnt Over District , '' which earlier in the 19th century had generated much religious excitement , including the beginnings of Mormonism , and social causes , such as abolitionism and support for the Underground Railroad . Her parents were friendly with the writer Mark Twain , and from this association young Crystal herself became acquainted with Twain . She was the sister of the socialist activist Max Eastman , with whom she was quite close throughout her life . The two lived together for several years on 11th Street in Greenwich Village among other radical activists . The group , including Ida Rauh , Inez Milholland , Floyd Dell , and Doris Stevens , also spent summers and weekends in Croton on the Hudson . Eastman graduated from Vassar College in 1903 and received an M.A. in sociology from Columbia University in 1904 . Receiving her law degree from New York University Law School , she graduated second in the class of 1907 . Social work pioneer and journal editor Paul Kellogg offered Eastman her first job , investigating labor conditions for The Pittsburgh Survey sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation . Her report , Work Accidents and the Law -LRB- 1910 -RRB- , became a classic and resulted in the first workers ' compensation law , which she drafted while serving on a New York state commission . She continued to campaign for occupational safety and health while working as an investigating attorney for the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations during Woodrow Wilson 's presidency . She was at one time called the `` most dangerous woman in America , '' due to her free-love idealism and outspoken nature . During a brief marriage to Wallace J. Benedict which ended in divorce , Eastman lived in Milwaukee and managed the unsuccessful 1912 Wisconsin suffrage battle . When she returned east in 1913 , she joined Alice Paul , Lucy Burns , and others in founding the militant Congressional Union , which became the National Woman 's Party . After the passage of the 19th Amendment gave women the vote in 1920 , Eastman and three others wrote the Equal Rights Amendment , first introduced in 1923 . One of the few socialists to endorse the ERA , she warned that protective legislation for women would mean only discrimination against women . Eastman claimed that one could assess the importance of the ERA by the intensity of the opposition to it , but she felt that it was still a struggle worth fighting . During World War I , Eastman was one of the founders of the Woman 's Peace Party , soon joined by Jane Addams , Lillian D. Wald , and others . She served as president of the New York branch . Renamed the Women 's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1921 , it remains the oldest extant women 's peace organization . Eastman also became executive director of the American Union Against Militarism , which lobbied against America 's entrance into the European war and more successfully against war with Mexico in 1916 , sought to remove profiteering from arms manufacturing , and campaigned against conscription and imperial adventures . When the United States entered World War I , Eastman organized with Roger Baldwin and Norman Thomas the National Civil Liberties Bureau to protect conscientious objectors , or in her words : `` To maintain something over here that will be worth coming back to when the weary war is over '' . The NCLB grew into the American Civil Liberties Union , with Baldwin at the head and Eastman functioning as attorney-in-charge . Eastman is credited as a founding member of the ACLU , but her role as founder of the NCLB may have been largely ignored by posterity due to her personal differences with Baldwin . In 1916 Eastman married the British editor and antiwar activist Walter Fuller . They had two children , Jeffrey and Annis . They worked together until the end of the war , when he returned to England to find work . In 1917 , Eastman co-founded a radical journal of politics , art , and literature , The Liberator , with her brother Max . She served as managing editor from 1917 to 1921 . After the war , Eastman organized the First Feminist Congress in 1919 . She commuted between London to be with her husband , and New York , where she was blacklisted and thus rendered unemployable during the Red Scare of 1919-1920 . During the 1920s her only paid work was as a columnist for feminist journals , notably Equal Rights and Time and Tide . Eastman claimed that `` life was a big battle for the complete feminist , '' but she was convinced that the complete feminist would someday achieve total victory . Crystal Eastman died on July 8 , 1928 , of nephritis . Eastman has been called one of the United States ' most neglected leaders , because , although she wrote pioneering legislation and created long-lasting political organizations , she disappeared from history for fifty years . Freda Kirchwey , then editor of The Nation , wrote at the time of her death : `` When she spoke to people -- whether it was to a small committee or a swarming crowd -- hearts beat faster . She was for thousands a symbol of what the free woman might be '' . In 2000 Eastman was inducted in the -LRB- American -RRB- National Women 's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls , New York . Eastman 's papers are housed at Harvard University .