A Most Stirring and Significant Episode: Religion and the Rise and Fall of Prohibition in Black Atlanta, 1865–1887 (Northern Illinois University Press - Drugs and Alcohol)

When Atlanta enacted prohibition in 1885, it was the largest city in the United States to do so. A Most Stirring and Significant Episode examines the rise of temperance sentiment among freed African Americans that made this vote possible—as well as the forces that resulted in its 1887 reversal well before the 18th Amendment to the Constitution created a national prohibition in 1919. H. Paul Thompson Jr.'s research also sheds light on the profoundly religious nature of African American involvement in the temperance movement. Contrary to the prevalent depiction of that movement as being one predominantly led by white, female activists like Carrie Nation, Thompson reveals here that African Americans were central to the rise of prohibition in the south during the 1880s. As such, A Most Stirring and Significant Episode offers a new take on the proliferation of prohibition and will not only speak to scholars of prohibition in the US and beyond, but also to historians of religion and the African American experience.

When Atlanta enacted prohibition in 1885, it was the largest city in the United States to do so. A Most Stirring and Significant Episode examines the rise of temperance sentiment among freed African Americans that made this vote possible—as well as the forces that resulted in its 1887 reversal well before the 18th Amendment to the Constitution created a national prohibition in 1919.

H. Paul Thompson Jr.'s research also sheds light on the profoundly religious nature of African American involvement in the temperance movement. Contrary to the prevalent depiction of that movement as being one predominantly led by white, female activists like Carrie Nation, Thompson reveals here that African Americans were central to the rise of prohibition in the south during the 1880s. As such, A Most Stirring and Significant Episode offers a new take on the proliferation of prohibition and will not only speak to scholars of prohibition in the US and beyond, but also to historians of religion and the African American experience.

Timeline Introduction Part 1 : Messengers from the North. "Our enterprise flows from the Gospel of Christ": the evangelical reform nexus roots of nineteenth-century temperance, 1785-1865 The message trickles South: introducing the freed people to temperance, 1865-1876 The trickle become a flood: Northern temperance targets Southern blacks, 1877-1890 Part 2 : Reformers in the South. Taking ownership: Black Atlanta's efforts to institutionalize a temperance-based moral community "The most enthusiastic election ever held in this country": Atlanta's 1885 local option election The "dry" years, 1885-1887 Prohibition revisited: Atlanta's 1887 local option election Afterword A Most Stirring and Significant Episode is the first book-length study of African American involvement in the 19th-century temperance movement, but it is much more than that. Unlike any previous work, it challenges the reader to interpret blacks' temperance rhetoric and response to prohibition in light of key elements of African and African American cosmology. As a study in the social history of ideas, it argues that 19th-century temperance ideology emerged from and reinforced widely held religiocultural values, and as such it was able to transcend the nation's yawning racial, regional, and chronological divides. - Jacket flap. When Atlanta enacted prohibition in 1885, it was the largest city in the US to do so. This book examines the rise of temperance sentiment among freed African Americans that made this vote possible, and the forces that resulted in its 1887 reversal well before the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution created a national prohibition in 1919.