High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes. In later life, however, his views turned sharply, and he became an advocate of free market economics and an anti-Communist.