development of fuel, dye, and other things industries might need; and use in hospitals for cleaning. Homemade beer, wine, and cider, and pre-banned alcohol could be drunk in the privacy of one’s own home.
7.Up until the 1920s, the only American women allowed into the large main rooms of saloons/bars were prostitutes and madams. In nice bars there were small “Ladies’ Rooms” where prominent women could drink. The speakeasies from 1920 to 1933 were the first drinking establishments where women could patronize the whole bar.
8.Cocktails and drinks in speakeasies were known to be expensive, so you saved up for a special night on the town, had plenty of money (or were with someone with money), or just partied at home.
9.Out of necessity, Appalachian mountain bootleggers tinkered with their vehicle engines to make them faster than police cars. This led to what we know today as the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR).
10.If you happen to be traveling through Kansas today, then feel lucky because they win for having the longest alcohol ban (sixty-eight years between 1880 and 1948). The alcohol ban was lifted by a new Kansas state law that was passed in 1965. However, it put all public bars out of business because only private bars were allowed. Twenty-one years later, in 1986, the private bar ban was lifted and within a year, 400 public bars opened. However, there was a stipulation—30 percent of bar sales must be from food. On a side note and to open the crazy Kansas box even more, in the 1970s—unbelievably—5’5” Vern Miller (ex–police officer, deputy sheriff, and county marshal who then went on to graduate law school) was elected as the Kansas attorney general in 1970. His job was to aggressively enforce Kansas’s liquor laws. Examples of his hostile assertiveness included raiding Amtrak trains that were passing through Kansas and forcing airlines to stop serving liquor while traveling through Kansas’s airspace. Miller made headlines and a book about him was published in 2008.
•••
Prohibition Words to Know
Amendment
An article added to the Constitution of the United States.
Anti-Saloon League
The number-one leading organization that lobbied for an American Prohibition in the early 1900s.
Bathtub Gin
A gin-like spirit made by the Mafia with purchased legal and illegal alcohol.
Bootlegger
A person who makes and sells illegal alcohol. The American term came from the 1625 term for hiding a liquor bottle in the leg of one’s boot.
Capone
Alphonse Gabriel “Al” Capone (1899–1947) was one of the famous American Mafia gangsters during Prohibition. He was the first of nine children born in America to his Italian-immigrant parents and grew up in Brooklyn. He quit Catholic school at age fourteen after hitting a teacher in the face, then became a member of two New York City youth gangs. In his adulthood, Capone became a bouncer and bartender for mobster Frankie Yale in a Coney Island dance hall called the Harvard Inn. It was here that Capone earned his nickname “Scarface” after insulting a woman (her brother cut his face). At age twenty, Capone left New York City and moved to Chicago, where he worked for the biggest Mafia boss, James “Big Jim” Colosimo, as a bouncer at a brothel (where he contracted syphilis). Soon he became a famous gang leader spending his money on custom-made suits, gourmet food and drink, jewelry, the best women money could buy, and Cuban cigars. His seven-year reign as crime boss ended when he was thirty-three years old.
Eighteenth Amendment
This established the Prohibition of alcoholic beverages in America by declaring the production, transport, and sale of alcohol illegal.
Flappers
A twenty-something generation of young women who drank cocktails, wore short skirts, short hair, listened to jazz, frequented speakeasies, wore excessive makeup, smoked, drove automobiles, had casual sex in the time known as the “Roarin’ Twenties.” These women would have been born between 1890 and 1910.
Gangsters
A criminal who is a member of a gang.
Jazz Age
Blues and jazz singer Bessie Smith in 1923 singing, “Me and My Gin.” © Photofest
A period of music from 1920–1928 that was put on hold for four years due to the Great Depression (1929–1933), and then resumed.
Ratify
To sign or give formal consent to a treaty, contract, or agreement, making it officially valid.
Roaring Twenties
This term and period in time encompasses many things. Briefly, it was a period of economic prosperity in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, and it spread after World War I in 1919. The spirit of the Roaring Twenties was fueled by people wanting to break away from tradition and who desired to enter into a modern era. Some large-scale examples include the introduction of automobiles, telephones, radio, motion pictures, electricity, and commercial aviation. For the first time, media focused on celebrities (especially sports celebs and moving picture movie stars). Cities built gigantic sports stadiums and Hollywood kept moving forward by introducing “talkies.” As for style, art deco was everywhere. Dance clubs popped up and fashion changed dramatically (no more corsets). Female long hair was cut into bobs, skirt hems rose, sleeves were cut, and a sexual revolution began to seep.
Rum Runner
A person who is involved in the illegal business of transporting and smuggling illegal alcohol. It mostly relates to ships smuggling rum.
Speakeasy
An illegal establishment that sold alcoholic beverages (also nicknamed “blind pig” or “blind tiger”) that had a password you had to “speak easy” at the entrance door.
Temperance
Temperance is defined as voluntary self-restraint or moderation in something.
Twenty-First Amendment
It repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, which mandated a national prohibition on alcohol.
Teetotaler
A person who chooses to not drink alcohol and in most cases has taken a pledge not to imbibe.
Volstead Act
The act that carried out the intent of the Eighteenth Amendment, which established the American Prohibition.
•••
An American Prohibition Timeline
1784 − A founding father and Philadelphia physician and politician, Benjamin Rush, publishes a pamphlet titled An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors on the Human Mind and Body.
1789 − The first known American temperance society is formed in Litchfield County, Connecticut, by leading business owners who feel alcohol hinders the conduct of their businesses.
1813
