Notes to Chapter 6
The “Dry” Years, 1885–1887

1. “Prohibition at the South,” New York Tribune, August 23, 1885.

2. Southern Recorder, December 2, 1887.

3. “They Are Excited,” Atlanta Constitution, July 12, 1886.

4. “The Result Declared,” Atlanta Constitution, December 25, 1885; “Status of Prohibition,” Atlanta Journal, December 26, 1885; “Atlanta’s Wine Rooms,” Atlanta Constitution, July 1, 1886; “Atlanta’s Wine Rooms,” “What ‘Native Wines’ Mean,” and “Winking for a Drink,” Atlanta Constitution, July 2, 1886.

5. “Will Not Close,” Atlanta Constitution, June 23, 1886; “Prohibition in Atlanta,” Atlanta Constitution, June 28, 1886; “On the Verge,” Atlanta Constitution, June 29, 1886; “Willing to Obey the Law,” Atlanta Constitution, July 2, 1886.

6. “Everything Goes,” Atlanta Journal, November 22, 1886. Soft drinks (ginger ale and root beer) had just been created in the 1870s and were being sold at pharmacy soda fountains. In May 1886, Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton invented Coca-Cola and sold it in Jacob’s Pharmacy. However, it did not sell particularly well in its first year, despite prohibition.

7. “The Day on the Streets,” and “The Last Drink,” Atlanta Constitution, July 1, 1886; “Atlanta’s Jollifications,” Augusta Chronicle, July 1, 1886; “How They Look” and “After the Battle,” Atlanta Constitution, July 2, 1886.

8. “No Bar’l at Home,” Atlanta Constitution, July 7, 1886.

9. “Beer and Whisky,” Atlanta Constitution, July 7, 1886; “Not Altogether Dry,” Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1886; “Prohibition in Atlanta,” New York Times, July 15, 1887; “Making More Liquor Cases,” Atlanta Constitution, July 16, 1886; “The First Big Gun,” Atlanta Constitution, July 20, 1886; “Prohibition in Atlanta,” Atlanta Constitution, October 10, 1886.

10. “A Demand for Nerve Tonic,” Atlanta Constitution, November 28, 1887; “The People’s Forum—The Wine Room Nuisance,” Atlanta Journal, November 19, 1886; “The Wine Rooms,” Atlanta Constitution, November 20, 1886; “After the Wine Rooms,” Atlanta Constitution, December 14, 1886; “The Wine Room Tax,” Atlanta Constitution, December 18, 1886; “Atlanta Wine Rooms,” Atlanta Journal, February 15, 1887; “The Wine Room Men,” Atlanta Constitution, February 23, 1887; “They Will Close,” Atlanta Constitution, September 14, 1887; “The Wine Room Bill,” Wesleyan Christian Advocate, September 21, 1887.

11. “Prohibition in Atlanta,” New York Times, October 10, 1886; “Only One More,” Atlanta Constitution, October 10, 1886; “Hawthorne on Atlanta,” Atlanta Constitution, June 5, 1887; “A ‘Black Sheep,’” Atlanta Constitution, November 4, 1887.

12. In other parts of the nation illegal sellers were known as “blind pigs.”

13. “Those Who Drank Yesterday,” Atlanta Constitution, July 3, 1886; “Moonshiners in Georgia,” New York Times, February 7, 1887; “Breaking the Law,” Atlanta Constitution, July 20, 1886; “The Blind Tiger,” Atlanta Constitution, August 21, 1886.

14. “They Are Excited,” Atlanta Constitution, July 12, 1886; “Prohibition in Atlanta,” New York Times, October 10, 1886; “Colored Candidates Out,” Atlanta Constitution, October 6, 1886.

15. Atlanta Police Court Docket, MSS 787, Atlanta History Center; “Temperance,” New York Evangelist, July 28, 1887; “The Negro Vote in the South,” New York Evangelist, December 8, 1887.

16. “Vox Populi: The People to be Consulted as to Their Choice,” Atlanta Journal, October 23, 1886.

17. Gaines apparently did not serve, because the press reported that Smith W. Easley replaced him during the deliberations of the committee. See “Compromise Effected,” Atlanta Journal, October 30, 1886.

18. “The Meeting Upstairs,” Atlanta Constitution, October 27, 1886; “What the Anti-Prohibitionists Did,” Atlanta Constitution, October 27, 1886; “‘Come Ye Out From Among Them’ ‘And the Sheep Were Separated From the Goats,’” Southern Recorder, October 29, 1886.

19. “Compromise Effected,” Atlanta Journal, October 30, 1886; “The Mass Meeting Tonight,” November 4, 1886; “Ratified” and “The Fusion Ticket Endorsed,” November 5, 1886; “A Story about Atlanta that the Telegraph Correspondents Do Not Make Much of,” The Voice, December 16, 1886.

20. Atlanta’s system of election was designed to control who got elected by limiting voter participation. Voters had to register separately for each election. Between 1884 and 1891 blacks comprised between 16 percent (1886) and 32 percent (1888) of all registered voters. See Clarence A. Bacote, “The Negro in Atlanta Politics” Phylon 16 (Fourth Quarter, 1955): 334.

21. “The Committee’s Actions,” Atlanta Journal, October 30, 1887.

22. Southern Recorder, April 1, 1887; “They All Left the Tent,” Atlanta Constitution, March 14, 1887; “The Gospel Tent filled with People to Hear Evangelist Tillman,” Atlanta Constitution, March 2, 1887.

23. “Negro Policemen for Atlanta,” Daily Intelligencer, September 8, 1867; “The New Captains,” Atlanta Constitution, April 2, 1885; Rabinowitz, Race Relations, 41–43; “Colored Men Want Recognition,” New York Times, March 26, 1887; “Inside of Atlanta,” Macon Telegraph, April 5, 1887.

24. Rabinowitz, Race Relations, 41–50; “Inside of Atlanta,” Macon Telegraph, April 7, 1887; “The Darky’s Story,” Atlanta Constitution, April 8, 1887; “Detectives Arrested on the Charge of Unlawful Trespass,” Atlanta Journal, April 7, 1887; “The Officers Exonerated,” Atlanta Constitution, April 24, 1887.

25. “Is This Prohibition?” Atlanta Constitution, October 23, 1887; “A ‘Black Sheep,’” Atlanta Constitution, November 4, 1887.

26. “Atlanta Liars,” Southern Recorder, September 16, 1887.

27. “The Killing of Mr. Haygood,” New York Times, March 3, 1886; “Fighting Whisky,” Atlanta Constitution, February 23, 1886; “Prohibition in Hall,” Atlanta Constitution, February 27, 1886; Southern Recorder, April 1, June 10, and August 12, 1887.

28. Southern Recorder, September 18, 1886.

29. Southern Recorder, October 8, 1886.

30. I say “painfully” accurate because Turner was one of the founders of Georgia’s Republican Party and had served as a Republican state representative during Reconstruction, until he and all other blacks were kicked out of the House by white lawmakers, on account of their color.

31. “Colored Prohibitionists,” Atlanta Constitution, November 6, 1885; Southern Recorder, October 2, 1886.

Stephen Angell found that the moral argument was only one of five prohibition arguments Turner used throughout his career. The others were (1) alcohol was harmful to the body, (2) alcohol was socially degrading, (3) temperance was an “appropriate” successor to abolitionism and was endorsed by Abraham Lincoln, and (4) the “best men” of white society were abstainers, and therefore adopting the practices of the “best men” was a sure way for blacks to ensure their survival. See Stephen W. Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 185–87.

32. “Prohibition Defeated in Texas,” Southern Recorder, August 12, 1887.

33. Carter, Black Side, 43.

34. “Items Paragraphically Noted,” Christian Recorder, January 3, 1889; “The Proceedings in Detail,” Fifth National Prohibition Convention, reel 1, series II, Temperance and Prohibition Papers, microfilm edition, Ohio Historical Society; “The Anti-Platform,” Atlanta Constitution, November 1, 1887.