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Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Eastman n.

also easeman

[black pron. of yeast as east; thus the image of yeast as expanding and thus making a ‘big man’; or yeast = bread n.¹ (2) = dough n. (1)]

(US black) a kept man, one who lives on money earned by a woman; a pimp.

1911		Journal Amer. Folk-lore Oct. 354: The ‘Eastman’ is kept fat by the women among whom he is universally the favorite.
1925		Odum & Johnson Negro and His Songs (1964) 163: I got it writ on de tail o’ my shirt: / I’m a natu’el-bohn eastman, don’t have to work.
1927		Furry Lewis ‘Kassie Jones’ 🎵 I’m a natural born eas’man on the road again / I left Memphis just to spread the news [...] / Had it written in the back of my shirt / Natural born eas’man don’t have to work.
1939		H.C. Brearley ‘Ba-ad nigger’ South Atlantic Quarterly 38 81: [The] nachel bohn Eastman, who may brag that he need not work ’cause I got it writ on the tail of my shirt.
1942		Berrey & Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Sl.
1952		L. Hughes Laughing to Keep from Crying 40: ‘A natural-born eastman,’ cried a tan-skin lady with a diamond wrist-watch. ‘He can have anything I got.’.