Speakeasies, rum runners, and backwoods fundamentalists railing about the ills of strong drink are just one small part of the global story of prohibition. The full story of prohibition—one you’ve probably never been told—is perhaps one of the most broad-based and successful transnational social movements of the modern era. The call for temperance motivated and aligned activists within progressive, social justice, labor rights, women’s rights, and indigenous rights movements advocating for communal self-protection against the corrupt and predatory “liquor machine” that had become rich off the misery and addictions of the poor around the world.
From the slums of South Asia, to the beerhalls of Central Europe, to the Native American reservations of the United States, discover 20 key figures from history that you didn’t know were prohibitionists.
Black Hawk
Full name: Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak
Lived: c. 1767-3 October 1838
Nationality: Sauk Tribe
Occupation: tribal leader
Chief Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak of the Sauk tribe on the upper Mississippi Valley steadfastly resisted white colonial encroachment upon his people’s sovereignty and sobriety. Knowing that white fur traders would use liquor to get his fellow tribesmen addicted to whiskey in order to swindle their furs, Black Hawk was an ardent prohibitionist, dumping the white man’s wicked water wherever he found it. During the War of 1812, he smashed the liquor of both American and British vessels along the Mississippi River. In 1832, the Black Hawk War started after white squatter Joshua Vandruff repeatedly defied Black Hawk’s pleas to not sell liquor to his people. After Black Hawk raided his tavern and dumped his liquor, Vandruff rode overland and told the Illinois governor fantastic tales of Sauk savagery that allegedly imperiled the white colonists. Without authorization from Washington, DC, Governor John Reynolds raised the Illinois militia to make war on Black Hawk and the Sauk and Fox tribes, ultimately forcing them from their ancestral lands.
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