3 things you didn't know about Prohibition on its 100th anniversary

One hundred years ago, by a bipartisan vote of 65 to 20, the U.S. Senate submitted to the states what became the 18th Amendment. A century on, the common understanding of the Prohibition Era is based more on folklore than fact. Many believe temperance was about right-wing “Bible-thumpers” dictating to everyone “thou shalt not drink.”

Even academics embrace that misunderstanding. The late sociologist Joseph Gusfield argued that Prohibition was a “symbolic crusade” of rural evangelicals against modernization and immigration. Historian Lisa McGirr says Prohibition was meant to “discipline” poor, urban, immigrant, and minority communities. Cast as culture clash, Prohibition would fit comfortably into a lineage of reactionary politics from nativist “Know Nothings” through the “whitelash” of Trumpism.

But viewing Prohibition as a conservative cultural backlash runs into many inconvenient facts. Here are three myths about the movement.

Temperance crusaders were mostly backward cultural conservatives.
Not so. To be sure, famed evangelists like firebrand Billy Sunday espoused temperance ideals. But they were fellow travelers with a progressive movement that worked to extend suffrage and rein in big business. Alcohol purveyors, by contrast, were cast as colonizers and capitalists, reaping revenue and taxes from their customers’ addiction.

Prohibition was not solely an evangelical movement, but rather an economic, political, and cultural coalition of Marx, Jefferson, and Jesus. Moral entreaties joined movements for self-determination and community protection against a trade that profited from its customers’ misery, and against the predatory state that drew income from it.

Read more at Philly.com