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.
Frances Willard
Full name: Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard
Lived: 28 September 1839-17 February 1898
Nationality: United States
Occupation: educator, social activist
Spurred on by the temperance activism of the Temperance Crusades of 1873-74, Dean of Women at Northwestern University Frances Willard threw herself wholly into the temperance cause. She would become president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) from 1879 until her death in 1898, tirelessly promoting a “do everything” campaign of philanthropy and social reform. Under her guidance, the WCTU not only became America’s most successful women’s organization, but the largest social organization in the US, with ancillaries of the World’s WCTU in countries around the globe. Willard believed that full woman suffrage was the only way to confront the predatory liquor traffic which subjugated families through alcoholism and addiction.
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