r/HistoryDefined

From an Ann Landers column in 2002

On January 17th, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. The manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquor was prohibited.

Prohibition had been a long time coming. Temperance movements had existed for over 100 years, driven by religious groups (especially evangelical Protestants), social reformers, and, most importantly, women. With physical abuse rampant and often made worse by men drinking, and with women having little legal recourse, temperance organizations became a major avenue for women’s activism.

Before the Civil War, 13 states had adopted some form of prohibition, but the war slowed the movement’s momentum. It returned with the rise of the Anti-Saloon League, a single-issue lobbying organization that was incredibly effective at spreading prohibitionist messaging through politics and popular culture.

Part of their success came from tying alcohol consumption to immigration and leaning heavily into American xenophobia. Immigrants, especially in growing cities, were portrayed as the source of America’s social problems, with alcohol blamed as a major cause.

World War I became the final push. Fighting Germany weakened one of the strongest anti-Prohibition groups, German Americans, while the argument that banning alcohol production would free resources for the war effort helped push the amendment forward.

Prohibition went into effect in 1920, and almost immediately the Prohibition Bureau, created through the Volstead Act to enforce the amendment, faced an impossible task.

While many Americans supported Prohibition and stopped drinking, many others, both those who had always opposed it and those who were simply indifferent, found ways around the law.

Bootlegging exploded. Alcohol flowed into the country through rum runners crossing from Canada and Mexico, as well as smuggling operations overseas. A major boon to Organized Crime in the United States.

Others exploited the medical exemption. Doctors had successfully lobbied for the ability to prescribe alcohol, and soon Americans were receiving government-stamped “medicinal whiskey” for everything from legitimate ailments to questionable ones.

Another option was making alcohol at home, often using industrial alcohol. The government instructed companies to denature industrial alcohol, hoping the taste and danger would discourage people from drinking it. It did not.
So the government ordered companies to add toxins. People still drank it.

Medical experts warned this would kill people, but the policy continued. More than 10,000 Americans died from poisoned alcohol. New York City Medical Examiner Charles Norris said:
“The government knows it is not stopping drinking by putting poison in alcohol... yet it continues its poisoning processes.”

Prohibition was always doomed to fail. Despite scenes like this, barrels of seized alcohol being destroyed, the government was fighting a battle against demand itself.

If interested, I cover the Prohibition era in detail here 😃: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-106-prohibition?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

In the early 20th century the temperance movement connected alcohol with immigration. To many Americans at the time, the country had succeeded because of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and immigrants were portrayed as threatening that success.

Built on white supremacy, Protestant nationalism, and xenophobia, the Klan naturally found common cause with Prohibition, which became law through the 18th Ammendment in 1920.

The Klan reached its peak in the 1920s, and support for Prohibition was a major part of its growth. The organization presented itself as a defender of law and order, pushed for strict enforcement of the Volstead Act, and even took enforcement into its own hands. Klansmen hunted bootleggers, raided illegal saloons, and attacked those they viewed as violating traditional American values. As historian Leonard Moore wrote, the Klan’s “support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation.”

The Klan’s membership, grew into the millions, commonly estimated between 1.5 and 4 million members. The Klan grew so powerful that it became a major issue at the 1924 Democratic National Convention. The nomination of Catholic anti-Klan candidate Al Smith drove many Klansmen away from the Democrats, helping Republican Calvin Coolidge win reelection. For a time, the Klan successfully presented itself as a patriotic defender of law, morality, and “traditional” America.

That image began to collapse when Indiana Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of state education official Madge Oberholtzer. The case shocked the nation and caused many Americans to reconsider the movement. The fact that Oberholtzer was a white Protestant woman was, tragically, a major factor in why the scandal resonated so strongly with the public.

If you’re interested, I did an essay on the Prohibition era in detail here; but let me know your thoughts on political artwork: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-106-prohibition?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios