20 people you didn’t know were Prohibitionists

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.

Tomas Masaryk

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Full name: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Lived: 7 March 1850-14 September 1937

Nationality: Czechoslovakia

Occupation: sociology professor, politician

Before becoming the George Washington of independent Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Masaryk was a sociology professor and budding Czechoslovak nationalist politician within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Having written two treatises on alcoholism, temperance became key to his liberal political philosophy. To prove themselves worthy for enlightened self-governance, his Czech and Slovak brethren had to swear off regressive alcoholism. As president after World War I, Masaryk championed responsibility, individual temperance, and prohibition—though as a liberal democrat, he recognized that his prohibitionism was not shared by the majority of his fellow citizens.