Prohibition

Ken Burns Got "Prohibition" Wrong

by Mark Lawrence Schrad

Burns largely accepts an individualistic and libertarian narrative of prohibition as a misbegotten campaign of moral scolds, missing the reformist, egalitarian, and humane demands of the movement and the exploitative nature of the "liquor traffic" it sought to disrupt. 

What Prohibition History Tells Us about Returning Abortion to the States

by Richard F. Hamm

Federal control of interstate commerce and the mail mean that medical abortifacents will be difficult for state-level antiabortion politicians to keep out of their borders. There's no doubt that they will seek to pass federal laws leading to a national abortion ban. 

The History of Saloons Helps Understand the Social Harm of the Pandemic

"In the century and a half after the founding, saloons continued to be a key social institution, places of business, leisure, and community for many men—until Prohibition wiped them out, destroying in one fell stroke the cultural and economic infrastructure they had long provided."

Outrage over Boris Johnson's Parties is Part of a Long Tradition

Since aristocratic 1920s Brits adopted the cocktail culture of Prohibition-era America, the idea of a hard-partying elite living by their own rules has been a source of popular outrage, with the Prime Minister only the latest case. 

The Truth About Prohibition

by Mark Lawrence Schrad

American historians have often identified Prohibition with a coalition of social reformers, nativists and religious fundamentalists. Looking at the international temperance and prohibition movement tells a different story of a fight against exploitation of workers and minority groups through addiction.

How the Great War Helped the Drive for Prohibition

by Kathryn Smith

Hatred of Germans (and their beer) was essential to dry propaganda.

Manhood, Madness, and Moonshine

by Dillon Carroll

Today's concern for "deaths of despair" among white Americans isn't unprecedented; a wave of alcoholism and temperance advocacy after the Civil War highlighted the relationship between social unsettlement, substance abuse and social reformism.

Under Columbus, Georgia: What Folklore Erases

by Bryan Banks

Subterranean tunnels under Columbus, Georgia have been repurposed as part of dramatic stories of crime, emancipation, and war, tales which obscure the more prosaic and violent aspects of the town's history. 

New York’s 21 Club Closing, Possibly Ending Historic Run That Began During Prohibition Era

The famed New York establishment may not survive the coronavirus pandemic. 

Let Us Drink in Public

Many modern open container laws derive from previous “public drunkenness” and “vagrancy” ordinances that criminalized not just alcoholism, but also poverty and homelessness.

A Complete Halt to the Liquor Traffic: Drink and Disease in the 1918 Epidemic

by E. Thomas Ewing

The most influential organization advocating for prohibition, the WCTU pressed for ratification of the 18th Amendment banning the sale of alcohol as influenza raged in 1918. But their celebration was short-lived.

The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever

Since the end of Prohibition, American restaurants have experienced a golden age. The coronavirus crisis has brought that era to a close.

‘Last call’: When Prohibition went into effect 100 years ago

A photo history of America’s ban on alcohol

Prohibition began 100 years ago, and its legacy remains

Featuring Harvard history professor Lisa McGirr, whose 2015 book “The War on Alcohol” examines Prohibition’s political and social repercussions.

Prohibition Was a Failed Experiment in Moral Governance

by Annika Neklason

A repealed amendment and generations of Supreme Court rulings have left the constitutional regulation of private behavior in the past. Will it stay there?

Lisa McGirr Featured on CBS on The legacy of Prohibition, 100 years later

"I think what people don't understand about Prohibition are the very serious and long-lasting legacies of the law."

How the Klan Fueled Prohibition

by Lisa McGirr

The 1920s weren’t just gin joints and jazz. Anti-immigrant racism was all the rage.

The Surprisingly Complex Link Between Prohibition and Women’s Rights

One of Prohibition's legacies is how, a century before the MeToo movement, it succeeded in making issues that women cared about part of the national conversation.

The Prohibition-era origins of the modern craft cocktail movement

by Jeffrey Miller

For better or worse, Prohibition changed the way Americans drank, and its cultural impact has never really gone away.

Why Do We Blame Women for Prohibition?

by Mark Lawrence Schrad

One hundred years later, it's time to challenge a long-held bias.