Review of The LAST CALL: RISE and FALL of PROHIBITION--1870 to 1933 by Daniel Okrent

A meticiulous, highly detailed accounting of how PROHIBITION came about along with other Reform movements in during that dramatic, controversial, and tragic period of time. What odd bedfellows though.

The huge effort to ban the importation, making, and using of acoholic beverages in the U.S. came about along with the Progressive era efforts at Moral Uplift by government force, for the restricing of immigration of eastern Europeans (Italians, Poles, Slavs, etc.), and Asians, Jews, and so on, many efforts to 'clean-up' corrupt government, attacks against other modern reform movements...

And, weirdly, a very strong support for the Ku Klux Klan (since it also was against alcoholic drinks, Roman Catholics, Jews, Blacks... The 1920's beginning in about 1914, there was an incredible 20thc century rise of that racist organization! The KKK was strongly
supported by Methodists, Baptists, even some Quakers (such as a large Quaker meeting in Indiana, where the lead pastor, a woman, invited about 30 white-robed KLANSMEN to the front of the meeting house!)

Of course, even President Woodrow Wilson supported Jim Crow laws! As a southener, when he came to power, he quickly SEGREGATED the Federal Government and soon violated 'freedom of speech' rights, etc.

Very strange. If you want to understand how all of this could happen, read this tragic very suspenseful 60-year history, The Last Call by Daniel Okrent.

Photos:

Will You Back Me Or Booze?” Propaganda Poster; with a photo of New York City Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Leach, right, watching agents pour liquor into sewer following a raid during the height of Prohibition
Women’s Holy War, published by Currier & Ives, 1874, via Library of Congress, Washington D.


Before settinly into weeks of intense reading, I had already known quite a bit about Prohibition.
But I very quickly learned how little I actully knew of the specifics--how it came about, of why it happened, and of why it so woefully failed--the only time an admendment to the Constitution was later repealed!


Another shocking