Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical circles in Greenwich Village. He supported socialism and became a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. For several years, he edited The Masses. With his sister Crystal Eastman, he co-founded in 1917 The Liberator, a radical magazine of politics and the arts.
Max Eastman
Eugene V. Debs, Eastman and Rose Pastor Stokes, 1918
Charlie Chaplin and Eastman in Hollywood, 1919
The Masses was a graphically innovative American magazine of socialist politics published monthly from 1911 until 1917, when federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription in the United States during World War I. It was succeeded by The Liberator and then later New Masses. It published reportage, fiction, poetry and art by the leading radicals of the time such as Max Eastman, John Reed, Dorothy Day, and Floyd Dell.
June 1914 issue of The Masses. Cover Illustration was drawn by John French Sloan and depicts the Ludlow Massacre
Physically Fit, a drawing by Henry J. Glintenkamp, published in the magazine in 1917, that was cited in the indictment.
John French Sloan's satirical take on the Armory Show, captioned "A Slight Attack of Dimentia Brought on by Excessive Study of the Much Talked of Cubist Pictures in the International Exhibition in New York."
The Masses (cover), April 1916, A sketch by Frank Walts of Mary Fuller, star of The Heart of a Mermaid (Lucius J. Henderson, 1916)
