When Atlanta enacted prohibition in 1885, it was the largest city in the United States to do so. A Most Stirring and Significant Episode examines the rise of temperance sentiment among freed African Americans that made this vote possible-as well as the forces that resulted in its 1887 reversal well before the 18th Amendment to the Constitution created a national prohibition in 1919.
H. Paul Thompson Jr.'s research also sheds light on the profoundly religious nature of African American involvement in the temperance movement. Contrary to the prevalent depiction of that movement as being one predominantly led by white, female activists like Carrie Nation, Thompson reveals here that African Americans were central to the rise of prohibition in the south during the 1880s. As such, A Most Stirring and Significant Episode offers a new take on the proliferation of prohibition and will not only speak to scholars of prohibition in the US and beyond, but also to historians of religion and the African American experience.
When Atlanta enacted prohibition in 1885, it was the largest city in the United States to do so. A Most Stirring and Significant Episode examines the rise of temperance sentiment among freed African Americans that made this vote possible-as well as the forces that resulted in its 1887 reversal well before the 18th Amendment to the Constitution created a national prohibition in 1919.
H. Paul Thompson Jr.'s research also sheds light on the profoundly religious nature of African American involvement in the temperance movement. Contrary to the prevalent depiction of that movement as being one predominantly led by white, female activists like Carrie Nation, Thompson reveals here that African Americans were central to the rise of prohibition in the south during the 1880s. As such, A Most Stirring and Significant Episode offers a new take on the proliferation of prohibition and will not only speak to scholars of prohibition in the US and beyond, but also to historians of religion and the African American experience.
H. Paul Thompson, Jr. is associate professor of history at North Greenville University. He is also president of the South Carolina Historical Association.
H. Paul Thompson breaks new ground with A Most Stirring and
Significant Episode. This excellent work offers a book-length study
of African Americans in the nineteenth-century temperance movement,
and is also a welcome contribution to the growing field of
literature about temperance and prohibition in the southern United
States. Focusing on the freedpeople of Atlanta, Thompson takes
seriously the role that religion played in this community's reform
efforts.
*Journal of Southern Religion*
Historians interested in questions of politics, gender, religion,
and urban life in postbellum southern history are indebted to his
pioneering and richly detailed study.
*Journal of American History*
In this fine study we learn that while Black Atlanta adopted
temperance mores from northern missionaries after the Civil War,
black leaders took ownership of the issue and carefully considered
whether or not to support local option prohibition.... By the time
statewide prohibition went into effect, Jim Crow disfranchisement
had stripped blacks of their political influence.... Yet this
should not obscure or diminish the importance of the local option
elections from the 1880s. Far too often historians have organized
their studies around a teleology culminating in the Eighteenth
Amendment. Thompson reminds us that there is much to be learned
about reform and the social and cultural boundaries that shaped it
in these earlier, and deeply meaningful, local contests.
*American Historical Review*
He depicts black Atlantans' embrace of prohibition and the
subsequent flurry of interracial politics as a manipulative sham
undone by the region's racial sins rather than a promising path not
taken.... Thompson's work... should stand as a testament to the
dynamism of southern prohibition and a welcome reminder to better
appreciate the many motivations of the various men and women who so
ardently championed it.
*Journal of Southern History*
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