After the Civil War, state and national Prohibition galvanized in Atlanta the issues of classism, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. While many consider flappers and gangsters the iconic images of the era, in reality, it was marked with temperance zealotry, blind tigers and white lightning. Georgia's protracted and intense battle changed the industrial and social landscapes of its capital city and unleashed a flood of illegal liquor that continually flowed in the wettest city in the South. Moonshine was the toast of the town from mill houses to the state capitol. The state eventually repealed prohibition, but the social, moral and legal repercussions still linger seventy years later. Join authors Ron Smith and Mary O. Boyle as they recount the colorful history of Atlanta's struggle to freely enjoy a drink.

Master story teller Marc Mappen applies a generational perspective to the gangsters of the Prohibition era—men born in the quarter century span from 1880 to 1905—who came to power with the Eighteenth Amendment. On January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution went into effect in the United States, “outlawing the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” A group of young criminals from immigrant backgrounds in cities around the nation stepped forward to disobey the law of the land in order to provide alcohol to thirsty Americans. Today the names of these young men—Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond, Nucky Johnson—are more familiar than ever, thanks in part to such cable programs as Boardwalk Empire. Here, Mappen strips way the many myths and legends from television and movies to describe the lives these gangsters lived and the battles they fought. Placing their criminal activities within the context of the issues facing the nation, from the Great Depression, government crackdowns, and politics to sexual morality, immigration, and ethnicity, he also recounts what befell this villainous group as the decades unwound. Making use of FBI and other government files, trial transcripts, and the latest scholarship, the book provides a lively narrative of shootouts, car chases, courtroom clashes, wire tapping, and rub-outs in the roaring 1920s, the Depression of the 1930s, and beyond. Mappen asserts that Prohibition changed organized crime in America. Although their activities were mercenary and violent, and they often sought to kill one another, the Prohibition generation built partnerships, assigned territories, and negotiated treaties, however short lived. They were able to transform the loosely associated gangs of the pre-Prohibition era into sophisticated, complex syndicates. In doing so, they inspired an enduring icon—the gangster—in American popular culture and demonstrated the nation’s ideals of innovation and initiative. View a three minute video of Marc Mappen speaking about Prohibition Gangsters.

In the late 1800s, Southern evangelicals believed contemporary troubles—everything from poverty to political corruption to violence between African Americans and whites—sprang from the bottles of “demon rum” regularly consumed in the South. Though temperance quickly gained support in the antebellum North, Southerners cast a skeptical eye on the movement, because of its ties with antislavery efforts. Postwar evangelicals quickly realized they had to make temperance appealing to the South by transforming the Yankee moral reform movement into something compatible with southern values and culture. In Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, Joe L. Coker examines the tactics and results of temperance reformers between 1880 and 1915. Though their denominations traditionally forbade the preaching of politics from the pulpit, an outgrowth of evangelical fervor led ministers and their congregations to sound the call for prohibition. Determined to save the South from the evils of alcohol, they played on southern cultural attitudes about politics, race, women, and honor to communicate their message. The evangelicals were successful in their approach, negotiating such political obstacles as public disapproval the church’s role in politics and vehement opposition to prohibition voiced by Jefferson Davis. The evangelical community successfully convinced the public that cheap liquor in the hands of African American “beasts” and drunkard husbands posed a serious threat to white women. Eventually, the code of honor that depended upon alcohol-centered hospitality and camaraderie was redefined to favor those who lived as Christians and supported the prohibition movement. Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause is the first comprehensive survey of temperance in the South. By tailoring the prohibition message to the unique context of the American South, southern evangelicals transformed the region into a hotbed of temperance activity, leading the national prohibition movement.

Examines the relationship between alcohol and the Jewish community throughout the nineteenth century and the period of Prohibition, describing the role of Jews in the liquor industry and the relationship between the anti-alcohol movement and anti-Semitism.

"This is the best treatment scholars have of black life in a southern state at the beginning of the twentieth century." -- Howard N. Rabinowitz, Journal of American History "The author shows clearly and forcefully the ways in which this [white] system abused and controlled the black lower caste in Georgia." -- Lester C. Lamon, American Historical Review. "Dittmer has a faculty for lucid exposition of complicated subjects. This is especially true of the sections on segregation, racial politics, disfranchisement, woman's suffrage and prohitibion, the neo-slavery in agriculture, and the racial violence whose threat and reality hung like a pall over all of Georgia throughout the period." -- Donald L. Grant, Georgia Historical Quarterly.

A comprehensive survey of the years the United States went dry--1920-1933.