ALCOHOL | Jan. 16–Prohibition Becomes Law

What a waste.

The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1919 after having been passed by the Congress in 1917.

It was not ended until FDR came into office and immediately allowed weak beer.

The Prohibition Amendment forbade the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes.” 

The law originated among religious groups that called for "temperance"–meaning alcohol-free living. The American woman's suffrage movement, for example, emerged in 1948 because of pent-up resentment of two women attending a Quaker temperance conference in London in 1940 who were excluded from the debates. Their anger simmered for eight years and then exploded.

One reason women didn't get the vote before 1917 is that "wet" voters didn't want to add women to the voting rolls because they were viewed as more likely to be anti-alcohol.

Nine months after ratification of the Prohibition Amendment in 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, or National Prohibition Act, over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson. The Volstead Act created a special unit of the Treasury Department to enforce the law.

Women got the vote in 1920. Meanwhile, organized crime flourished in America.

In 1933, the 21st Amendment was quickly passed and ratified, repealing Prohibition. It was a bad idea.

100 Years Ago - Inez Milholland Led Parade

The Suffrage Centennial Celebration in Washington will re-enact the parade of 5,000 suffragists, who braved 500,000 onlookers, including many hostile and physically violent men, on March 3, 1913, with a single public demand, the right to vote! The Celebration begins Thursday, February 28 and continues through March 3.

I plan to attend on Feb. 28 and March 2-3. (I have to be in NYC on March 1.)

The weekend events include exhibits, speakers, panels, movies, special programs. See historic places and treasures found only in the nation’s capital including the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constituent at the National Archives and the Sewall-Belmont House & Museum, the historic headquarters of the National Woman’s Party.

See suffragists picket the White House once more at noontime - 10 am to 2 pm (the picketing was launched in 1917, immediately after a group of NWP women went to President Wilson with memorials on the death of Inez Milholland two months before.  Wilson ridiculed their lack of political savvy and that provoked a backlash. At that time the National Woman's Party was located across Lafayette Square from the White House, so they went back to HQ and decided to turn around and start picketing until Wilson agreed to support suffrage. That picketing led to arrests, then imprisonment, then a hunger strike. Public opinion shifted and Wilson changed his mind (as he did on the other major issue of 1916, going to war with Germany). The Congress passed the 19th Amendment, Wilson signed it, and it was ratified by the last required state in 1920. This ended a 72-year struggle (dating from the Seneca Falls Convention) by three generations and millions of women. 

Come honor and learn about the women behind the historic victory that gave women the power to vote.  See www.suffrage-centennial.org for complete information and details.  Join the parade-- -Suffrage Centennial March  down Pennsylvania Avenue on Sunday at 9:00 am. Register at: http://nwhm.ticketleap.com/join-the-parade/

Google "Inez Milholland" and you will find many of my blogposts on this great woman, one of the American  Heroines of the 20th century. Or go to www.boissevain.us and click on "Inez Milholland".

INEZ | Leads DC Parade,1913

Inez waits to start the DC suffrage parade on March 3, 1913, the eve of
Woodrow Wilson's inauguration. This photo was the basis of the iconic
painting of Inez Milholland that still hangs in the lobby of the Sewall-
Belmont House (renamed the Paul-Belmont National Monument). 

The NY Times, p. 1, Mar. 4, 1913, said: “Through all the confusion and turmoil the women paraders marched calmly, keeping a military formation as best they could.” http://bit.ly/YppmES

The 5,000 suffragist marchers–men and women–left the Capitol and marched along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, with 500,000 onlookers.

“Two New York women shared in the honors of the day. One was Miss Inez Milholland and the other was Gen. Rosalie Jones, who with her hikers occupied a place near the end of the line.

“Miss Milholland was an imposing figure in a white broadcloth Cossack suit and long white-kid boots. From her shoulders hung a pale-blue cloak, adorned with a golden maltese  cross. She was mounted on Gray Dawn, a white horse belonging to A. D. Addison of this city. Miss Milholland was by far the most picturesque figure in the parade.”

“At one time at the height of the disorder Inez Milholland helped to restrain spectators by riding her horse into the crowd.”

19th Amendment Passed Congress in 1919

Garrison Keillor's excellent daily email announces today (June 4) that "On this date in 1919, the 19th Amendment passed the Senate and gave American women the right to vote." Actually, the right to vote wasn't obtained for another year and three months, when Tennessee was the last required state to ratify the 19th Amendment, in August 1920. Keillor's summary is well-drafted:

Susan B. Anthony drafted the original amendment, with the help of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and it was first formally introduced in 1878. It sat in committee for nine years before it went before the Senate in 1887 and was voted down. Over the next decades, several individual states approved women's voting rights, but a Constitutional amendment wasn't considered again until 1914. It was repeatedly defeated, and an anti-suffrage movement campaigned against it, claiming that it was unfeminine for women to venture outside their natural domestic sphere. But in 1918, Woodrow Wilson threw his support behind the suffrage movement. Women had entered the workforce in large numbers during World War I, and in a speech that President Wilson gave in September 1918, he said: "We have made partners of the women in this war. Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of right?" The amendment passed both Houses of Congress the following May.

The question that Keillor does not address is: Why did Wilson endorse the suffrage amendment in 1918? He opposed it in the election of 1916. The suffragists said that year: "He kept out og war, and he kept us out of suffrage." Wilson reversed himself in 1917 on the war, and in 1918 on suffrage. The reason for Wilson's reversal was ostensibly the partnership of women in the war effort. But a more plausible reason is that public opinion had become solidly pro-suffragist because of the brutal treatment of women in the prisons to which they were taken and force-fed after they took up a silent vigil in front of the White House. This vigil in turn was started immediately after Wilson insulted a delegation of women in January 1917 when they came with 250 memorials from women's groups around the country using Inez Milholland Boissevain's death to argue that the President should revisit his opposition to suffrage. More on Inez Milholland at www.boissevain.us.