Chapter 7
Atlanta’s 1887 Local Option Election
We will rally to the polls, boys,
We’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom!
We will rally from the hillside,
We’ll rally from the plain,
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom!
Eighteen hundred and eighty seven was not a good year for Southern prohibitionists. Much to their chagrin, on the fourth of August, Texas voters rejected a constitutional prohibition amendment, and the same scene was repeated in Tennessee on the twenty-ninth of September. The news was national, but above all, Southern. Prohibitionist speakers had come from throughout the nation, including the city of Atlanta, to rally the voters, and all for naught. White prohibitionists were “disappointed” at the lack of support they received from black voters, while mostly ignoring how few whites had voted dry.
The issue was so provocative that even Jefferson Davis, former president of the Confederacy, emerged from obscurity to speak his mind. During the Texas campaign Davis wrote an open letter condemning the prohibition movement, which was reprinted in newspapers throughout the South. According to Davis, personal liberty was a “cornerstone” of the government established by the nation’s founding fathers, and prohibition was a sumptuary law that violated that principle. Tensions ran high, as an argument between friends over Davis’s ideas erupted into a fistfight in the middle of a train ride in Tennessee. Davis’s letter was reprinted in the Atlanta Constitution, producing many heated conversations just a few months before Atlanta’s second local option vote.1
Less than one month after Atlanta’s saloons closed, the city’s anti-prohibitionists began organizing for prohibition’s overthrow. They held their first meeting on July 23, displaying a feisty combative tone right from the beginning. One attendee declared, “We mean to begin the fight now, and we mean to keep it up until we have triumphed or been beaten past recovery. . . . The prohibitionists may as well understand once for all that they will not be allowed any rest.” On July 30 they formalized their organization with the very politically astute moniker Conservative Citizens Club (CCC) and wrote a platform and elected officers. They committed themselves to high license fees for saloons, electing people of their persuasion, and fighting city council ordinances and policies that ostensibly were designed to offset the negative economic effects of prohibition. Many of the outspoken leaders in the October 1886 citizens’ mass meeting and the nominating committee of 50 were CCC members. Bishop Turner, not exactly an objective voice, characterized them as being composed largely of ex-barkeepers, their landlords, and the employees of both groups. The CCC did not include African Americans.2
While the Conservative Citizens Club was public, printing its officers list, platform, members’ names, and meeting times in various Atlanta newspapers, the Mutual Aid Brotherhoods, or MABs, were much more secretive. Their impetus for organizing a few months later appears to have been the dissatisfaction of some people with the “fusion ticket” created by the committee of 50 for city elections. In addition to anti-prohibitionists, they appealed to immigrants and labor. The MAB membership and platform were not reported in the press, although occasional references were made to the group, its influence, and individual members. It is possible that the secrecy of this organization permitted many saloon owners to join it and network in a way not likely if it were public. Following the fall 1886 municipal elections the Conservative Citizens Club seemed to decline and the Mutual Aid Brotherhood rose in prominence.3
The existence of an organized anti-prohibition movement and the differences of opinion among prohibitionists themselves made for turbulent and sometimes acrimonious politics until the November 1887 vote. With the founding of the CCC in July 1886, anti-prohibitionists openly declared their intention to take the fight into politics, but ironically, three months later they criticized the Young Men’s Prohibition Club for endorsing prohibitionists for the state legislature. The incriminations and recriminations never stopped, for the prohibitionists accused antis of trying to undermine the will of the people and then complicated matters by fighting among themselves about how much trust to extend to the antis in the government. But for all the animosity between them, the groups had no difficulty agreeing to suppress black political involvement.4
In early September 1887 anti-prohibitionists began circulating petitions for another local option referendum, but they had one last obstacle to beginning the second campaign. Atlanta was scheduled to host the second of its three city-booster cotton expositions. These expos were the favorites of New South men intent on making Atlanta the regional center of trade and industry. The Piedmont Exposition was scheduled for October 10–22 in Piedmont Park. The highlight of the expo was a two-day presidential visit orchestrated by Henry Grady. President Grover Cleveland’s visit was no small thing for Atlantans, and Southerners generally, since he was the first Democratic president since the Civil War. Both sides agreed to postpone the campaign until after the expo so as not to detract from its booster and economic potential for the city. Although the wets began collecting petition signatures in September for another vote and began publishing accusatory newspaper articles, they stopped with the articles once the prohibitionists complained.
In early October, shoe wholesaler R. D. Spalding and attorney Walter R. Brown turned in a petition with 2,500 names requesting a second local option vote, even though only 800 were needed. On October 28 the county ordinary certified the petition and scheduled the vote for Saturday, November 26, the earliest possible date according to General Local Option law. As in 1885, animated even vitriolic arguments, appeals, denunciations, speeches, and letters filled the local press daily, for weeks.5
Blacks and the “Antis” the Second Time
This time it was the antis who set the tone of the campaign, not the prohibitionists. The antis were on the offensive throughout, with a well-thought-out and powerfully articulated list of arguments. Convinced that the masses had tired of prohibition and were ready to bring back saloons, the antis became confident and aggressive, even militant at times. Anti-prohibitionists braided together a variety of rhetorical strategies and capitalized on serendipitous events like Jefferson Davis’s letters and the momentum from the Texas and Tennessee votes to produce a definitive victory for their cause. Reform had been tried, and the antis simply had to point out its failure. They accurately gauged the “pulse” of the masses and employed arguments that made intuitive, practical sense to blacks and working-class whites. In addition, this time the antis were even able to claim the high moral ground.
A small group of white anti-prohibitionist leaders launched their campaign with a public address on October 25 that introduced their platform. After listing complaints about prohibitionist policies, they stated clearly their support for strict control of saloons. They argued that the high license approach would yield better morals than prohibition and that prior to prohibition Atlanta already was one of the most sober cities of its size in America. The antis claimed that prohibitionists wanted to keep liquor away from certain classes of people, especially Negroes, “contrary to the principles of popular government.” Prohibitionists received all the blame for the strife and divisiveness that had characterized Atlanta’s government for two years. They criticized Atlanta’s growth as too slow for a city its size and promised that the overthrow of prohibition would bring back prosperity. Finally, the antis decried the use of blue badges by the prohis as too divisive. These themes appeared over and over in the arguments of anti speakers during the campaign.6
Anti-prohibitionists designed their campaign around eight major citywide rallies, multiple ward meetings, and several meetings in communities beyond the city limits. Probably all meetings were interracial. Giving no less than ten speeches, William Pledger was by far the most active black speaker. Among the most prominent local antis were Evan P. Howell and Clark Howell and P. J. Moran, all connected to the Atlanta Constitution. The most popular out-of-town speaker was Texas Republican A. M. Cochran, who arrived fresh from Texas’s recent defeat of constitutional prohibition. Stealing a page from the drys’ playbook, the newly organized Young Men’s Anti-Prohibition Club organized black chapters in each ward. Aside from the ward clubs, there was no black attempt to organize on a citywide basis, as in the first election. Black concerns with prohibition so closely paralleled those of white antis that they saw no need to create their own organization, and while a strong spirit of interracial cooperation was evident, the antis did not gush over blacks as white prohibitionists had done in 1885.
One of the surprises of the 1887 campaign was the breakup of the solid black clergy support for prohibition. Baptist pastor C. O. Jones, previously a dry, announced that he would vote the “Liberty” ticket this time around. Bethel’s J. S. Flipper, the pastor who replaced Wesley J. Gaines in January 1886, refused to speak publicly for prohibition during most of the campaign, much to the consternation of white prohibitionists. Senator Colquitt arrogantly took it upon himself to ask Flipper’s bishop, Alexander Wayman, to place another man at Bethel who would be more supportive of prohibition. Colquitt’s request betrayed the racial hubris harbored by so many white drys at the time. The North Georgia Annual Conference, where pastoral appointments were made, convened about ten days before the election. Having no reason to remove Flipper, Bishop Wayman reappointed him according to his congregation’s request. The newspaper quoted Flipper as saying that he had never taken a drop of whiskey in his life, and the AME church was a temperance church, but that he was going to be his “own man” on the prohibition issue. These comments caused quite a stir because they implicitly called into question the integrity and independence of outspoken prohibitionist black clergy. Flipper said he did not have anything against other ministers who participated in the campaign, but since it was creating such “bad feeling” he personally preferred not to participate. “Strife is becoming great,” he said, “and I shant make it greater by speaking either way.” He promised to fight whiskey from his pulpit instead of the political stump. The next week, however, just before the election, he wrote a letter to the Atlanta Constitution and came out squarely for prohibition: “Put me down for time and eternity on the side of God and the right—PROHIBITION.” Perhaps Flipper believed this statement and its timing was the safest way out of a tricky situation. He embraced the position of his church and his conscience and at the same time came across as not giving in to pressure from whites, thereby maintaining his “manhood” and retaining the respect of his parishioners. Although he had squandered his ability to influence the outcome of the election, he had retained something even more important.7
Anti-Prohibition Rhetoric Targeting Black Voters
The antis scored a major coup with blacks and working-class whites by successfully framing prohibition in the language of class warfare. They went to great lengths to point out its class-based inequities. They argued that rich people designed prohibition for their own benefit because they were the only ones who could still easily get liquor in their private clubs or import wholesale quantities, while “every man with a dime . . . can not do so openly but in such a manner as to make him feel like a thief.” This reality “arrays one class of citizens against another, and thereby hurts all classes,” complained another speaker. “If prohibition isn’t a law to benefit the rich I’d like to know it,” said Fulton Colville, president of the Young Men’s Anti-Prohibition Club. “He can buy his whisky in quantity, and when a snake bites him he has it at hand. But the poor man can’t do this, and when a snake bites him . . . he has to fall back on water.” Antis also identified a shared victimization between blacks and working-class whites: “They say, Oh, yes, we drink, but then you know we don’t want the working men to drink it, especially the colored people! They don’t mean anything good for white or colored working men.” The poor man “is as abundantly able to take care of himself as the rich man,” asserted one speaker. Another announced that “The prohibitionists want to be the poor man’s guardian. But you don’t want such guardianship, do you?” Of course the audience responded with cries of “No we don’t!” Attorney and former mayor John B. Goodwin surely said what was in the minds of his audience when he asserted, “We stand as freemen proclaiming that there is manhood enough within us to guard our appetites.” The wets stood in a long tradition of working-class Americans who asserted their own (republican) virtuousness.8
Another element of the antis’ defense of the working class attacked police officers’ enforcement practices, especially the arrests of individuals who possessed liquor, just to hold them as witnesses. Undoubtedly this practice was more of a problem for the lower classes. Fulton Colville called this police behavior “an outrage on law and liberty.” Another angry speaker, merchandise broker Eugene Mitchell, turned 1885 prohibitionists’ rhetoric back on themselves:
I’m going to steal an expression from Dr. Hawthorne. In one of his speeches two years ago Dr. Hawthorne concluded with this sentence: “Blot the era of oppression out and let a universal freedom in.” Talk about oppression! Isn’t it oppression for the police to rob the people on the public highways and fire upon people, merely because the officer suspects they have bought liquor. These are some of the damnable outrages that result from prohibition. Yes, blot the era of oppression out!9
One of the most clever attacks against prohibitionists’ promises came from the black porter Walter Landrum early in the campaign in a mostly black First Ward meeting. He attacked prohibitionists for being untrustworthy, betraying blacks, and using oppressive enforcement practices. “You can’t place any dependence upon the promises of the prohibitionists. They may promise to place a policeman’s club in your hand, but they will place it on your head,” he declared. “Great applause” followed this comment from the mostly black audience, who obviously “got it.” This line was so witty that a white speaker used it in a mostly colored third meeting a couple of days later. White prohibitionists fearful of the social and political implications of hiring black police learned that failure to hire them could just as easily backfire.10
Landrum’s comments suggest a third way wets appealed to the concerns of their political base. They reminded black voters how little prohibitionists had done for them. William Pledger harped on this theme more than most. In the same First Ward meeting where Landrum spoke, Pledger asked, “When did these prohibitionists ever help you?” and received cries of “Never!” from the audience. Pledger then related a personal story in which he witnessed a confrontation that led to the arrest of an innocent black man. Pledger asked several prominent white prohibitionists to help raise bail money because the individual claimed to be a prohibitionist, but no one helped. He eventually found a white anti who “cheerfully” helped bail the man out of jail. In another speech Pledger predicted that the same white preachers who were now cozying up to their black colleagues would be the first to oppose sharing a railroad car with the same black clergy after the election.11
In addition to appealing to working-class blacks and whites, the anti-prohibitionists aggressively crafted a positive political image for themselves. They attacked arguably the two most influential groups of prohibitionists, preachers and women. Speakers openly proclaimed their high honor for women and respect for the clergy, in their proper roles, but they argued that their political involvement “debased their holy calling.” Speakers usually linked their comments about women and preachers. In the 1885 campaign, Pledger complained about Reverend E. R. Carter and other preachers’ involvement in politics, but no one had attacked women. In 1887 Livingston Mims, an employee of New York Life Insurance’s Atlanta office, testified that “no man” had a “higher admiration for woman than” he, but that women’s political involvement with prohibition had caused him to “hang my head in shame for them.” Speakers claimed that when preachers entered politics they “descended” from their pulpits. “I believe in old fashioned forms, old fashioned church, which kept their preachers aloof from the mire of politics,” Mims declared. “Those who prostitute their religion . . . I have no respect for.” Preachers not only “descended” from their high calling but, according to William Pledger, caused women to do the same:
The women had better stay home and attend to their domestic duties. I honor a woman. Around the fire-side she rules as undisputed queen. But so soon as she divests herself of her womanly nature, comes out into the world and takes her place with men, she at that moment deprives herself of man’s homage. [Applause.] The preachers are responsible for this.12
Speakers admonished voters not to listen to the advice of either their pastors or their wives but to make their own independent decisions, which played on well-respected traditions. The wets’ attack on the clergy appealed to many because it was based on the widely embraced “spirituality of the church” doctrine. This concept, as originally developed by antebellum Southern clergy, maintained that since the church was a spiritual entity it should not speak out on worldly or political matters such as slavery. Now that slavery had ended, prohibition appeared to be another appropriate application of this teaching. Also, middle-class Victorian values held that the home was the proper sphere for women, while politics and business were male arenas. By embracing strong Southern traditions and the cultural norms of middle-class America, wets attractively positioned themselves and their cause as moderate, even conservative, not radical and certainly not “evil.”13
In addition to aligning themselves with traditional gender and clergy roles, wets further buttressed their image by contrasting their own integrity with the hypocrisy, lies, and immorality of the drys. Antis’ characterization of prohibitionists ranged from “inconsistent” to the “party of fraud and deception.” One speaker constructed an entire speech around a list of ten prohibitionist inconsistencies. His list earned him “vociferous applause and laughter” from the audience. Blacks charged prohibitionists with not fulfilling the promise of improved race relations. John Emory Bryant, the Republican prohibitionist, announced that just as in the last local option election the colored Young Men’s Prohibition Clubs would receive monetary awards based on the number of voters they got to the polls. Antis jumped on this announcement, calling it vote buying and indicative of the hypocrisy of prohibitionists who talked incessantly in the first election about the immorality of the antis’ vote-buying efforts. Attorney Carroll Payne condemned the prohibitionists in no uncertain terms:
Let every man who wears the blue ribbon swear never to touch liquor more, and then we will either see the blue ribbons disappear or whisky one or the other. [Laughter and cheering.] The people have discovered the sham, the train of evils such as lying hypocrisy, deceit, violation of law, and a thousand contemptible vices . . . the people are tired of it. [Cheers.]14
Whatever the accusation, audiences always seemed heartily to affirm speakers’ charges of prohibitionist inconsistency and deception.15
In contrast to the deceitful wine-bibbing prohibitionists, the wets practically turned their rallies into temperance society meetings. They drew a clear distinction between advocating temperance and advocating prohibition. On one occasion William Pledger repeated his temperance position several times just to make it clear, something he rarely mentioned in the 1885 campaign. “Because I am an ardent opponent of prohibition, it does not follow that I am in favor of drunkenness. I emphatically announce my hostility to intemperance. I am opposed to the excessive use of liquor. It’s a bad thing. I want everyone to avoid the abuse of whiskey.” Former mayor John B. Goodwin asserted that antis were as much a “temperance party” as the drys, while another speaker proudly announced that he had never been in a barroom in his life. Some speakers, such as the one who bragged about his history in the Good Templars, stressed their support for moral suasion but not for the coerciveness of prohibition.16
But anti speakers went even farther, asserting their morality and religious devotion. One speaker asserted he had “more respect for pure undefiled religion” than any other man, while A. M. Cochrane of Texas declared he was proud of being a Methodist his whole life and planned on being one when he died. Evan P. Howell, president of the Atlanta Constitution Company, was among those speakers who employed Bible passages. Howell reminded his listeners that too much whiskey was harmful. He said he knew that because “God’s book says so, and I believe every word in the Bible.” This comment elicited “great applause.” Pledger read Scripture verses and on one occasion taught on their meaning for 30 minutes. On another occasion, a minister offered up a prayer at an anti rally. Such things were unheard of in wet rallies in 1885. In openly identifying with temperance, religion, and the Bible, anti-prohibitionists brilliantly positioned themselves squarely in the middle of respectable Southern society.17
In addition to developing these new themes for 1887, anti-prohibitionists continued to harp on their favorite theme from 1885, the prosperity of the city. Antis marshaled a long list of economic statistics and anecdotal evidence to suggest that the city’s population and economic growth had suffered under prohibition. Wets also complained that the thousands of dollars citizens spent on liquor imported from other cities could be going into the local economy. They complained that prohibition had caused many working-class men to go to other cities to look for work and that local capitalists were investing in business enterprises elsewhere. The return of saloons, the brewery, and wholesale liquor houses would also mean a return of workers and capital to Atlanta. Unlike in 1885, the economic arguments primarily targeted whites, but black voters in majority white meetings and rallies would have been exposed to them. Because antis’ economic arguments focused so extensively on property, business ownership, and employer concerns, these arguments probably lacked saliency for most black voters.18
The final and maybe most powerful argument was that of personal liberty. In 1885 “Liberty” was the antis’ motto; in 1887 it was their mantra. Everywhere that people voted on prohibition across the South, antis cried “Liberty!” No single concept received as much attention from wet speakers as this “foundation stone.” Virtually every anti speaker made some mention of the fact that prohibition trampled on people’s personal liberty to eat and drink what they wanted. Although this argument was framed in political and national terms, speakers also used religious and historical arguments. While one person referred to the “divine liberty” bequeathed by the “fathers of the revolution,” others reminded their listeners that America was a nation of sovereign citizens, not monarchical subjects, and warned that a decline in the love of freedom was a “sure sign of national decay,” a slip in some republican-sounding language. Depending on the speaker, personal liberty was a human trait, a right of citizenship, or a democratic principle. Jefferson, Washington, and Madison were often invoked. Speakers praised their black listeners for being such strong supporters of liberty. People for whom emancipation meant so much could certainly be counted on to defend their long-awaited liberty and not deny it to others. Just to make sure his assumptions were correct, A. M. Cochrane asked his black listeners, “Now my colored friend, will you stand firm and vote for liberty?” and “Can I say to the white man that if he won’t vote your liberty away you won’t vote his away?” As expected, he received shouts of “Yes!” to each question. Personal liberty received such prominence that it seemed to some prohibitionists the wets rarely mentioned anything else.19
Throughout the campaign, anti-prohibitionists effectively set its agenda and assumed the moral high ground. Anti-prohibitionists skillfully crafted their rhetoric to draw in blacks, the white working class, and Atlanta’s civic-minded merchant class. At the same time, antis projected a respectable public image of themselves and their cause. All of this put the prohibitionists on the defensive this time.
Prohibitionists and Blacks the Second Time
The prohibitionists’ campaign began in earnest following the Piedmont Exposition when they chose former mayor George Hillyer as their president. Many of the leaders from 1885 spearheaded this campaign also, but some new people joined. Although no blacks were members of the finance committee, the advisory board included E. R. Carter, Wesley Gaines, and Smith W. Easley. Wilbur P. Thirkield, the dean of the Gammon School of Theology, also served. The blacks who served on ward committees included the contractor Alexander Hamilton, the undertaker David T. Howard (whose wife was active in the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union), Republican activist Jackson McHenry (dry again, after having briefly opposed prohibition in 1886), mail carrier C. C. Wimbish, shoemaker Nick Holmes, Smith W. Easley, the undertaker Mitchell Cargile, and Wesley J. Gaines, recently made presiding elder of the Atlanta district of the North Georgia Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Atlanta University professor H. M. Sessions also served on a ward committee. A. E. Buck, John Emory Bryant, and James G. Thrower stirred up black voters again. Unlike in 1885, Sam Small never preached, and Sam Jones did not raise his tent. The lack of Jones’s tent did not prevent the drys from rallying their troops, however. More than 40 people addressed large audiences in 12 major rallies and numerous ward meetings. The Young Men’s Prohibition Club and Colored Young Men’s Prohibition Club reorganized themselves in each ward, proudly distributing blue “For Prohibition” badges. They usually met before the rallies and paraded through the streets with bands and banners. Black and white women organized separately, by ward. They prayed regularly and prepared and served lunches on Election Day, while antis criticized them for trying to influence the vote. Sam Jones opened the campaign with a sermon at the opera house on Sunday, October 23, but he left town after that to preach in the West for several weeks. As in 1885, the prohibitionists temporarily “withdrew” the color line so audiences practiced mixed seating, blacks and whites shared the same platform, and members of each race addressed mixed audiences.20
Fig. 25—Cartoonist’s perspective on Atlanta’s 1887 Local Option election. From Macon Telegraph, November 20, 1887. NewsBank, inc., a division of Readex
One of the main campaign strategies prohibitionists repeated in 1887 was canvassing the city. Workers went from door to door, polling residents on their opinions regarding prohibition, reminding them to register, and urging them to vote for prohibition. These brief encounters could be unpleasant for both parties. Canvassers reported that antis cursed them and abused them in various ways. Sometimes drys met wet workers while they were out. While two Spelman Seminary teachers canvassed a part of the city on Sunday, November 13, they talked to unpersuadable wets they met along the way who rehearsed their personal liberty arguments. They called it a memorable experience but admitted it was “no easy task.” One reason these encounters sometimes became contentious was often that the woman of the house was being addressed by a man in the absence of her husband, and it was not considered proper etiquette for a woman to speak on political issues, especially to a strange man. One man’s wife was offended by the tone of a canvasser’s comment, so she told her husband after he returned from work. A couple of days later when the husband met the canvasser he confronted him about his comments. The canvasser denied them, but the husband cursed him out anyway. Indignant, the canvasser turned in the husband for disorderly conduct and using profane language in public, and the husband paid a small fine. When asked about the situation, the mayor defended the husband’s right to defend the “sanctity of his fireside.” Although dry canvassers were not professionally trained to deal with the public, the anti-prohibitionists who called them “unprincipled roughs” were practicing electioneering hyperbole. These encounters stoked the tensions that pervaded the city.21
One pleasant surprise for prohibitionists was the conversion of two former black anti leaders: Moses Bently and Alonzo W. Burnett. During the election Bently worked on the prohibitionists’ Sixth Ward committee. In late October Burnett surprised his readers with an editorial in his Weekly Defiance announcing that “now we have seen both sides and are certainly convinced that for the Negro at any rate, prohibition is best.” In a subsequent editorial he explained the offense in the fall of 1886 when the wet citizens’ committee did not consider appointing a black to the committee of 50 until they saw the drys had. Burnett decried the “treachery and deception” of the wets and concluded that they had “never shown the Negro any recognition except such as the prohibitionists have forced them to show him.” Again, he pointed out, when the wets published their resolutions at the beginning of the 1887 campaign they included no black signatories. Beyond being angry at white antis, Burnett also believed prohibition had positive effects on his race despite the fact that “everything that could be done has been done to bring the law into contempt and to cast obloquy upon its advocates.” The press did not indicate whether Burnett played an active role in campaign rallies, but the editorial column of the Defiance was his mouthpiece. The paper soon became known as “one of the prohibition organs of the city.” As with Jackson McHenry and James B. Parker, Burnett and Bently evidently changed positions because of their own reassessment of the effects of prohibition and whatever other issues were important to them at the time. Newspaper reports of Young Men’s Prohibition Club meetings mention other blacks who became drys in 1887, but Burnett and Bently were by far the most prominent.22
The prohibitionists failed to control the direction of the public debate as they had in 1885 and were constantly scrambling to keep up with wet tactics and rhetoric. A few months before the election some members of the city council introduced a bill that would have created, in case Atlantans overturned prohibition, strict limits on saloons. They would be restricted to a half-mile radius from the city center where they could be most easily policed, and there would be a $1,500 license fee. The council approved it, but since it wanted these provisions enshrined in the city’s charter, the state legislature had to approve it also. In the legislature, a shrewd move by anti-prohibitionists put the drys in an impossible situation. A Fulton County representative submitted an amendment to the bill that earned it the support of anti-prohibitionist groups such as the secretive Mutual Aid Brotherhood. The amendment required a citywide referendum to implement the changes. This provision made the bill unacceptable to the prohibitionists.
The prohibitionists feared that the referendum requirement would make voters think that if they repealed prohibition they could turn around the next week and vote in strict saloon controls. Undoubtedly, some prohibition-leaning voters would have liked this alternative, and the drys feared losing their votes if the election appeared to be a choice between prohibition and high license. The prohis considered the bill little more than a tactic to help the antis win the election. They argued that the wets might say to one group they supported high license but turn around and promise another group saloons throughout the city. In legislative hearings prohibitionists argued that high license was by definition discriminatory “class” legislation because it prevented less-well-off businessmen from entering the business. It was unlikely that citizens would have ever voted for such legislation, and the antis knew it. For drys this further proved their contention that antis’ “support” for high license had always been disingenuous. Prohibitionists’ lobbying killed the bill, but their success enabled the antis to portray the prohis as uncompromising extremists. Throughout the campaign prohibitionists constantly reminded their audiences that “Our platform is: Keep the barrooms out. The platform of the antis is: Bring the barrooms in.” It was a straight up or down vote, and the prohibitionists offered no nightmare scenarios about what would happen if the wets won.23
Prohibitionist Rhetoric Targeting Black Voters
The wets determined much of the rhetoric of the campaign by hurling accusations to which drys felt obliged to respond. Virtually every prohibitionist speaker had to devote a portion of his talk to “damage control” because of the wets’ aggressive campaigning. Prohibitionists responded to seven charges: prohibition is a violation of personal liberty; prohibition does not prohibit; prohibition is hurting Atlanta’s economy; preachers and women have no business in politics; prohibitionists have brought divisiveness to city politics; drys are really only concerned with keeping liquor from blacks and working-class whites; and prohis are really uncharitable people. Prohibitionists spent more time responding to the personal liberty charge than any other. They repeatedly argued that there was no such thing as absolute personal liberty as long as people lived outside a state of savagery and under the rule of law. Henry Grady, a teetotaler who was known to serve liquor to his guests, gave two extensive speeches in which, as far as the drys were concerned, he presented conclusive evidence of Atlanta’s economic growth under prohibition. All drys asserted without qualification that there were fewer drunkards on the streets and fewer criminals being sent to the chain gang, and that streets previously the home of many saloons, like Peters and Decatur Streets, showed a much improved moral character. There was one charge prohis never tried to deny—police brutality in enforcing prohibition.24
Although these charges and rebuttals were of interest to blacks—especially the lack of response to charges of police brutality—it seems that blacks particularly wanted to know why they should vote for prohibition since white prohibitionists did not keep their promises the first time, specifically in the area of adding blacks to the police force. At least three black speakers addressed this issue, taking different positions. Sam Jones was the only white who dared to address it, and he simply asked blacks rhetorically what the current anti-prohibitionist mayor had done for them. E. R. Carter, however, argued that a vote for the wets would be analogous to what the blind Hebrew prophet Samson did when he knocked down the pillars of the temple, killing himself along with his Philistine enemies. Carter said he personally would rather make a choice so that all parties live and not die, meaning a vote for prohibition. One popular outside black speaker brought in for the campaign was Reverend C. N. Grandison from North Carolina. Grandison tried to get voters to see that the prejudice of the police commissioners was race-based, having nothing to do with prohibition. As proof of his point, he reminded his listeners that when the antis were a majority on the police board they never appointed blacks either. On another occasion Grandison echoed Carter’s sentiment by saying, “You can’t spite the white man without spiting your own race.” Bishop Turner also opposed making an issue out of black policemen. Intra-communal friction, he argued, would result if some blacks got on the force and others did not. There would be jealousy and perhaps even worse. “We know one another so well that it is better that colored policemen were not on the force,” he declared. “They would find out more than white men ever dreamed of.” A black coping mechanism since slavery days had been to avoid, as much as possible, giving information to whites in authority. That mistrust had changed little in freedom and it frustrated criminal investigations done by white police. “There is no more comparison between the liquor traffic and a policeman’s place than there is between hell and heaven,” he said. Turner asked rhetorically, “When you vote against whisky do you vote for the white people?” When the crowd yelled back, “No, we vote for ourselves,” Turner responded, “It is the foolishness of folly to say otherwise.”25
Prohibitionists saved their sharpest and most caustic rhetoric for the antis’ hypocritical discovery of religion and their crude attack on the clergy and women. Reverend Grandison criticized the antis for suddenly finding religion and then only using Scriptures before black audiences. Senator Colquitt once began his speech with compliments for the song and prayer that opened the meeting and then asked if anyone had ever heard of an anti-prohibitionist meeting opening with prayer. What sort of prayer could a liquor dealer offer, he asked? Colquitt then made up a mock prayer of a hypothetical liquor seller who asked God to give men and boys “unquenchable thirst” for whiskey. Of course, this elicited much laughter and applause. Given the central place of the clergy in Atlanta’s prohibition movement, it is not surprising that some of the prohis’ sharpest sarcasm was used to defend ministers, 77 of whom (all white) signed a public statement at the beginning of the campaign praising the benefits of prohibition in Atlanta. When opening his one major speech of the campaign, Bishop Turner sarcastically announced that he made no apology for his appearance despite the “exceedingly fastidious” concerns antis had recently raised about the “dignity of the ministry.” Turner mockingly added that maybe the other camp would soon open a theological institute. Another speaker charged that those who presumed the right to tell preachers what they ought to do and not do “are the very men who know less about preachers and the duty of preachers than any other class of men.” Then there was the witty approach of Dr. J. W. Lee, pastor of Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, who accepted at face value the antis’ characterization of politics and preachers but carried it to its logical conclusion: “If the politicians have brought politics so low that a minister cannot even speak of the subject . . . without staining his precious clerical robes, it is about time politics was taken out of the hands of those who have brought them so low and turned over to people who have conscience and taste enough to elevate them.”26
Expending so much energy and resources defending themselves and their cause seemed to have kept prohibitionists from going on the offensive. As in 1885, prohis repeated their call for women to influence their husbands and sons, and they argued that crime had decreased just as they had predicted. One speaker claimed that Fulton County was even beginning to rent convicts from other counties because of a shortage on its chain gang. Given the prosperous economy and declining crime rates, prohis asked rhetorically how the liberty that bringing back the saloon represented could possibly improve life for whites or blacks. Despite their efforts, however, the prohibitionists remained back on their heels during the entire election campaign.27
Final Week of the Campaign
The hysteria of the campaign peaked in its final week. Nearly every evening each side sponsored some sort of parade or public display. Several fortuitous events for the wets occurred during the last week, not giving the drys enough time to respond. Apparently drawn to Atlanta during the Piedmont Expo, a black patent medicine salesman named Yellowstone Kit had been drawing crowds for weeks. Part showman, part doctor, and part stump speaker, Kit was very popular. During his nightly shows, which drew thousands, he sold a “Japanese Herb Pad” that promised to cure a variety of ailments. Four days before the election Kit announced his opposition to prohibition and urged his audience, “Don’t sell your liberty. Why these people will buy your vote now and this winter they will turn you out of your house.” Although he spoke against drunkenness, he cynically reminded drinkers’ wives that one benefit of saloons is that they would at least know where to look for their husbands. His popularity among blacks probably made his opinion as important for blacks as Jefferson Davis’s summertime endorsement was for whites. Even before Kit announced his position, wets had assumed from his rhetoric that he was on their side.28
Also during the last week of the campaign, an unidentified group of wet black voters drew up a list of resolutions that a minister read at a rally. They condemned Senator Colquitt’s attempt to fire Big Bethel’s J. S. Flipper, they honored Flipper and four other black pastors by name for the “manly course” they pursued in the campaign, and they listed the reasons why they were planning to vote wet. They planned to vote “for the sale” because in 1885 white prohibitionists intentionally deceived them with lies, procuring whiskey had been inconvenient for them compared to wealthy people, and because as a race they had been treated like criminals by the police because of the actions of a few lawbreakers. They also condemned as affronts to their manhood the attempts by prohis to buy their votes and by women to influence their vote by offering them free lunches on election day. They pledged themselves to support “all necessary” means to regulate the sale of intoxicants and declared they were as competent to “take care of ourselves as some of the prohibition leaders, who belong to clubs where drinking is as freely done as in a barroom.” The reading of the resolutions was followed by “wild cheers and calls.” Read publicly just three nights before the election, it seemed designed to make it appear as though Black Atlanta en masse had issued its definitive statement on the prohibition experiment and an explanation of its expected response. Its formulaic and summative qualities, combined with no public explanation of its origins or signatories, suggest that maybe it was written by one of the anti committees. It carefully rehearsed almost all of the antis’ principal arguments. The antis—black and white—successfully portrayed themselves as traditional, moral, and peace- and prosperity-loving patriotic citizens. It has always been difficult to lose an American election with that image.29
Shortly before the election, William Pledger capitalized on Jefferson Davis’s open letters. As a wet, Pledger was excited about Davis’s endorsement and not the least bothered by his background, much to the horror of dry blacks. Pledger announced to a crowd that even though Davis led the government determined to keep his people in shackles, he could still honor him for his “high character, purity of life and great learning.” In the same rally he and hundreds of other black men lifted three cheers for Jefferson Davis. Horrified at the thought of this, Smith W. Easley in his Herald of United Churches accused the men in the crowd of giving up their sense of honor for a few dollars. Alonzo Burnett also expressed his shock: “Whenever a man’s zeal for a cause leads him into the indiscriminate eulogy of patriots and TRAITORS, it is time to abandon that cause. . . . If the negro is not to despise Jeff Davis, pray, whom or what is he to despise?” One can hardly imagine a more jarring scene than a crowd of blacks cheering Jefferson Davis. The prohibition campaign had created the strangest imaginable bedfellows!30
Yet another significant last-minute occurrence was a slickly done flyer that appeared just a few days before the vote. It pictured Abraham Lincoln with a recently freed black family, with the man kneeling before him. Underneath the picture were the words: “Prohibition is slavery. I will cut the manacles from your hands.” Further writing purported to be quoting Lincoln attacking prohibition as contrary to the freedom he had just fought for. This appropriation of Lincoln by the antis (there is no evidence Lincoln ever made the attributed statement) could have only helped their cause, especially among voters never privy to Lincoln’s image in the Storrs School chapel or among those who had never been moved to sign the Lincoln Temperance Pledge.31
The campaign culminated with three mass rallies. Two nights before the election the prohibitionists began their rally with an “immense” torchlight parade containing hundreds of drummers. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, could not fit in the warehouse, so leaders quickly arranged for simultaneous outdoor meetings. Among the many who addressed the crowd were C. N. Grandison, E. R. Carter, Henry Grady, Senator Colquitt, and Dr. J. B. Hawthorne. On election eve the drys met for one last rally and an inspirational speech from Dr. William Felton, who reviewed all the prohibition arguments as if his audience were preparing for an exam the next day.
Fig. 26—Anti-Prohibition Handbill, 1887. From National Temperance Advocate, January 1888. New York Public Library
The wets held their election eve rally in DeGive’s Opera House. As their faithful followers arrived they were greeted by brass bands and several bonfires in the streets. Because an overflow crowd filled the streets for several blocks, the leaders hastily arranged for several speakers to address the masses outside. Unlike in 1885, neither camp corralled and entertained voters all night, but that did not stop some from drinking anyway. One paper reported more drunks on the street on election eve than had been seen in a long time.32
Election Day and Its Aftermath
Election Day assumed a festive character throughout the city. The press reported that if a traveler had not known about the election and happened to arrive at the train station on November 26, he could not have missed the excitement. Blue and red badges were everywhere. Antis paraded through the streets with brass bands and red-and-white banners emblazoned with “Liberty!” Carriages were adorned with placards saying “Prohibition” or “Return Prosperity to the city and VOTE FOR THE SALE.” WCTU women and anti women operated lunch counters next to each polling station for their respective voters. White and black ladies calling each other “sister” openly entreated men to “vote for Jesus,” with some white women even speaking to unfamiliar black men, something normal etiquette frowned upon. One black man was so struck by whites’ solicitation of his people that he reportedly exclaimed, “Bless de Lawd; I’se lived to see de cullud folks as good as de whites!” Young women in prayer bands walked from polling station to polling station.33
Underlying the festive mood, however, were some real logistical difficulties. Even though the city increased the number of voting precincts from two to six (one for each ward), all voters did not get a chance to cast their ballot, as they had in 1885. Each party sent black and white poll watchers who, among other things, tried to count how many voted for each side and challenged supposedly illegal voters for the other side. Despite the efforts of poll watchers, several prohibitionist leaders contended that there were many illegal votes, insinuating they were all on the wet side, although when pressed they admitted there might have been some on their side, too.
Rumors begun by each camp added to the tension and excitement of election day. Probably in an attempt to encourage their supporters, the drys began a rumor that the wet mayor had actually voted dry, which was a lie. When a policeman was heard shooting at someone and it became known that the person was black, a rumor began that the “prohibitionist policeman” (as of March all policemen were prohibitionists) had shot at a black man trying to vote wet. Blacks waiting in line to vote had to be urged by white wets to remain. The truth was that a policeman had shot at a black thief running away from the scene of a crime, but police-black relations were so poor that it seemed plausible that a police officer would shoot at a black voter.34
As in 1885, a record number of people registered to vote, making voting long and tedious. There were 8,570 registered city voters, an increase of 1,357 over 1885 (see table 7). About 35 percent of all registrants were black.35 Early in the day the drys voted heavily and appeared to be in the lead, but by mid-afternoon the “For the Sale” ballots began to swamp the ballot box. Some voters went home rather than wait for hours to cast their ballot. Making matters even worse for the drys was Atlanta’s policy that the only votes counted were the ones cast before the polling station closed. When the polling stations closed at six o’clock, most still had a line of people waiting to cast their ballot. The number of citizens who did not get to cast their ballot ran into the hundreds. At the end of the day the wets had a majority in every precinct except South Bend, the one containing Clark University. The wets won with 5,183 votes compared to 4,061 for the prohibitionists. Probably a majority of both whites and blacks voted “For the Sale.”36
Almost immediately prohibitionist leaders claimed they had lost because of illegal voting by wets. Their initial thoughts were that they should either challenge the election results because of ostensibly illegal votes or support the prosecution of illegal voters by supplying what information they had to the authorities. But they also admitted early on that neither approach would change the election results and that even if they could, that manner of victory and the animosity it would generate would not be worth the effort. Others wanted to challenge all illegal votes from both sides simply because of the necessity of preserving the “purity” of the ballot box.37 Henry Grady opposed taking any legal action, and by November 29 his opinion had won the day—the election results were not contested. Many also talked about remaining organized so that they would be prepared to conduct another campaign in two years. Most saw the end of prohibition in Atlanta as only a temporary setback, and they were anxious to move beyond the tensions created by the campaign. It is not clear whether blacks participated in these post-election meetings, but if they did they probably played a minor role.38
It seems clear that black voters took their stand against prohibition after the two-year experiment. Late on Election Day, based on reports from their poll watchers, W. T. Turnbull, chairman of the Young Men’s Prohibition Club, estimated that only four hundred to six hundred blacks voted dry. “We had perhaps four hundred of the best negroes of Atlanta with us from first to last. They were ready to work all the time, but whenever we touched the negro ranks we found them wet. . . . We could never get enough negroes to make the fight a safe one.” Turnbull went on to say that he was “sure” that the prohis did not get even 600 black votes out of an estimated 3,200 registered blacks. These estimates put the number of dry black votes at less than 20 percent, maybe one-third of what it was in 1885. It is suggestive of black sentiment that the ward with the largest black population, the Fourth Ward, also produced the largest margin of victory for the wets. In addition, some blacks were so turned off by the whole campaign that they simply refused to register; compared to 1885 the percentage of eligible blacks who registered dropped by about 10 percent. While approximately 1,500 more whites registered to vote than in 1885, only about 100 more blacks registered, if even that many. The nation’s press reported that the black “stampede” to the anti camp overturned prohibition in Atlanta.39
Atlanta, Once Again “Torn Up from the Lowest Foundation of Her Emotions”
Accusations immediately began to fly within prohibitionist circles. While some claimed most blacks voted dry, many others immediately accused blacks of voting wet, revealing previously muted prejudices. One strident paper chastised blacks—“Atlanta’s ignorance and depravity”—for exercising the “sovereign prerogative of free American citizens” to “fasten the teeth of the rum fiend in the hearts of fifty thousand people.” Another paper viewed the black vote as harmful to the race and demonstrated both a paternalistic attitude and the typical white misunderstanding of the Southern black experience by asking, “Why is it that the colored people . . . are found acting against their own interests?” From the perspective of Atlanta’s wet black voters, of course, they were acting in their own interests. Black prohibitionist opinions paralleled those of whites. The Christian Recorder said it was “extremely sorry” that the majority of the race voted wet and that the city as a whole lacked the “moral courage” to retain prohibition. To the consternation of white and black drys, Atlanta’s local option elections demonstrated that its blacks had just as many divisions and interests as did its whites. Since whites were in the majority, however, a strong white dry vote could have easily passed prohibition over a strong black wet vote, but white prohis again chose to ignore this fact. Instead, they began a dangerous racialized finger-pointing.40
A tragic event that occurred on election night even further racialized the election results. Charnell Hightower, a white member of the Young Men’s Prohibition Club, met a small group of drunken blacks on Ivy Street. They asked him how he voted; after some hesitance he finally admitted he was a dry. After he passed them, one of the black men threw a rock and hit him in the back of his head, causing severe bleeding and a concussion. Hightower died four days later. On December 1, the Young Men’s Prohibition Club hosted his funeral, and Dr. J. B. Hawthorne was among the eulogizers. He said it would be “unjust” and “exceedingly foolish” to blame anti-prohibitionists for the murder, but he called the murder the “fruit” of the “iniquitous traffic” that the recent election had just returned to the city. The irony of the fact that drunkards had just committed murder under “double” prohibition41 seemed to have escaped him. Hawthorne warned that the act was prophetic, saying that the high license men would prove “powerless before the savage fury of the black rabble howling for free liquor,” violating his pledge not to blame the antis for Hightower’s murder. Before saloons could be legally reopened, a certain few blacks had already created a negative racial image for frustrated white prohibitionists to use against all blacks in the name of progress. But it was not just white prohibitionists who were angry at black wets.42
The strong anti-prohibitionist black vote also exposed previously hidden divisions within the black community. The significant reduction in the black dry vote meant that some church members had voted wet despite their pastor’s exhortations, and this fact created weeks of strife in several congregations. Big Bethel and Allen Temple’s leadership were so exercised over the fact that some of their flock voted wet that they cancelled their first regularly scheduled prayer meeting following the election just to keep peace in the church. Other churches experienced worse repercussions. The pastor of Lloyd Street Methodist Episcopal Church, who repeatedly warned his members not to vote wet, removed a couple of deacons for insubordination and put so much pressure on a third one that he simply resigned. The pastor then appointed a committee to decide if the ousted deacons should be expelled. The black prohibitionist leader Nick Holmes, a member of E. R. Carter’s Friendship Baptist Church, chaired a committee in his church that recommended the removal from office of “straight out anti” deacons and any other officeholder who had voted wet.43
Of all the post-election church tensions, however, the press provided the most detailed coverage about the troubles at First Congregational Church, which still had a white pastor. As discussed in chapter two, the church had a formal process for charging and removing members.44 Prohibitionist members “preferred” charges against at least four fellow members for “violating your church covenant in working for the return of the rum traffic to the city.” Micah Mitchell had given speeches for the wets, and Charlie Harper used his hack to transport wet voters to the polls. The disciplinary committee recommended their expulsion, but its decision had to be ratified by a majority vote of the membership. Many people arrived early for the trial meeting. Each member had his charges read publicly by an appointed “prosecutor” and had an opportunity to speak for himself. Since the first three men were unrepentant for their anti votes and campaign support, more than 75 percent of the voting members supported their expulsion. The fourth member was an old barber named Dougherty Hutchins, who was simply charged with being drunk and using abusive language. He challenged anyone to stand up and say in public they had seen him drunk. No one did, and by this and other “conciliatory” gestures he retained his membership. But several members were so disaffected by the whole process that even though they attended they refused to vote.45
Bishop Henry M. Turner, who did not pastor a church at this time, vented his anger through the pages of his Southern Recorder. He praised J. S. Flipper for his “bold stand” for prohibition but accused him of being too late. During the campaign, black wets had accused white drys of being disingenuous in their relationship to blacks; now was Turner’s chance to retaliate in kind: “Can we go the Opera House and sit in the dress circle since you gained your ‘personal liberty’?” “Since the Negro has succeeded in obtaining his ‘personal liberty,’ we want him to exercise a part of it by asking his white friends to grant him liberty enough to allow him to get a license and sell whiskey in his own name. YOU CAN’T GET IT!” The fact that neither a dry nor a wet vote could realistically enable a black man to anticipate improved race relations demonstrated the hegemony of white supremacy in 1880s Atlanta. The fact that black voters on both sides sought the same results suggests how deeply they longed for the equal treatment that would validate their independence and manhood. The internecine struggles of Black Atlanta that followed the vote revealed the pent-up frustrations created by white supremacy.46
But it was not just the losers who commented on the outcome of the election. Atlanta’s Experience, an anonymously authored pamphlet published following the vote, used a barrage of statistics to demonstrate the economic harm done by prohibition and to implicitly predict prosperous days ahead. The author quoted a landlord saying that rental prices had plummeted 25 percent or more on his business properties in the central business district. Convictions in Fulton County Superior Court had increased during prohibition, as well as arrests for drunkenness. The amount of whiskey shipped into Atlanta did not decrease, and if one counted the wine rooms and clubs, there were nearly as many places to purchase liquor as before prohibition. The author made it clear that the 1887 vote was a choice to bring economic prosperity back to the city.47
Some observers continued to be bothered by the general disregard for racial etiquette demonstrated during the campaign. From a neighboring county, the DeKalb Chronicle editorialized about the efforts of white WCTU ladies to work with black women: “We desire temperance, but if our women must sacrifice their crowning jewel, womanly modesty, and associate themselves with people of questionable character, and with those in whom they can find no congeniality, we prefer less temperance.” Blacks also criticized the relaxed etiquette. One black man was quoted in the paper as saying that the forwardness of white ladies with black voters was dangerous because, “if one of our young men . . . should speak to one of them the next day, he would stand a mighty good chance of getting lynched.” Just as in 1885, Atlanta had once again been “torn up from the lowest foundation of her emotions.”48
Why 1887 Was Not 1885
Atlanta went wet in 1887 because the black vote went wet. The fissures within the black community were not apparent during the 1885 vote, but prohibition and the 1887 vote exposed the growing divide between principled prohibitionists and opportunistic prohibitionists, or blacks who had been influenced by Northerners from the evangelical reform nexus and those who had not. African Americans with a stronger connection to the cultural and spiritual traditions of their African past than to the ideas of the reform nexus were predisposed toward a relatively more pragmatic approach to survival in a racist society. They were more inclined to evaluate prohibition based on whether it delivered on its promises, whether it “worked,” analogous to the traditional African method of responding to priests, and even spirit beings. Judged against the needs of their community, personal temperance might be effective, hence “good,” and even “virtuous,” but prohibition proved to be none of these. With the ethical dexterity (ambiguity, to some) of Brer Rabbit, many black voters who supported prohibition in 1885 saw no contradiction in rejecting it in 1887 after it failed to produce the promised results. For principled prohibitionists, the minority of black voters who viewed temperance and prohibition in absolute moral terms, such thinking could only be interpreted as equivocation or compromise. But that was the cultural and ethical space in which most blacks lived, and in some ways being an opportunistic prohibitionist voter was a more authentically “African” position than that of the principled prohibitionists.
Yet Atlanta also went wet in 1887 because the white vote went wet. Too many Southern white prohibitionists turned the 1880s local option elections into referendums on the freed people’s supposed “readiness” for citizenship and ignored the strong wet sentiment among rank-and-file white voters, even evangelical whites. Joe Coker has persuasively argued that, before prohibition could become successful in the “Land of the Lost Cause,” evangelicals had to adapt it to Southern white culture. They did that by gradually co-opting the Southern sense of honor by redefining it from one that glorified drinking, fighting, and gambling to one that embraced abstinence, support for law and order, and morally upright behavior. Second, by their unflinching persistence they overturned the doctrine of the “spirituality of the church” by continuously arguing that Christians were obligated to “vote as you pray.” The third area of which Coker speaks is race relations. On the issue of race, rather than co-opt or invert the cultural norm, evangelical prohibitionists surrendered to it. They refused to oppose lynchings ostensibly carried out to defend white women’s purity from black male rapists and instead argued that the best defense for white women (and hence the best way to stop the lynching) was to stop the sale of liquor. In January 1908 Georgia became the first Southern state to adopt prohibition. Coker argues that prohibition did not and could not come to the South until all three of these cultural conversions occurred, and these changes were not complete until the late 1890s at the earliest. This explains Atlanta’s large white wet votes in the 1880s.49
White Atlantans were unconvinced, and Black Atlanta had a sense of “twoness” that created competing and unequal sets of motivating factors. The lived experience of prohibition—broken promises, bickering, absence of increased political opportunities for blacks—effectively eliminated the opportunistic dry black vote. Beneath all the acrimony between dry and wet whites lay a solid substratum of commitment to white supremacy, which was not lost on black Atlantans. The interracialism displayed by white prohibitionists in 1885 was truly out of character for them. They could not maintain it. They were not ready to treat blacks as political equals, not to mention economic or social equals. In terms of race relations, the “relative balance of progressive and conservative political forces,” which Rochon maintains is critical to the political acceptance of reform movement ideas, was clearly tilted the wrong way.50
Support for temperance and prohibition was maintained by the rising better class of blacks, and it grew among whites, but when prohibition finally came to Georgia 20 years later it was not done by plebiscite. By the time it arrived, the better class of blacks had solidified itself with social organizations, a modicum of assets, and sophisticated networking, and they retained their commitment to temperance rooted in the values of the evangelical reform nexus. But whites had become so distant from blacks that they did not notice, and besides, it did not matter because African Americans had been disfranchised.
Defeat we never will confess,
We shall win, yes, we shall win;
Because we fight for righteousness.
We shall win, yes, we shall win;
Though enemies may all unite
Our holy purposes to blight,
They all shall flee before the light,
We shall win, yes, we shall win.
—“We Shall Win,” second stanza