"Slaves to rum" : alcohol, temperance, and race in America, 1800-1920

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Black men and women heralded the cause of the temperance movement, the organized push to combat Americans' excessive drinking habits. This thesis centers on the origins of their advocacy in the context of debates over slavery, prejudice, and segregation in the United States. White Americans justified their racism by constructing images of Black 'degradation'. Implicit in this racist conception was the idea that Black Americans were unable to control themselves, including around alcohol. White people thus feared that Black alcohol consumption would breed crime and racial violence. Armed with this fantasy of criminality, white reformers set out to suppress Black Americans and maintain their social and political power. Black reformers contested these attempts from the origins of their temperance crusade in the 1820s until Prohibition a full century later. Men and women organized across the North and, after emancipation, the South in order to formulate a response to ideas of degradation and drunkenness. Namely, they refused to drink at all. Black Americans were among the most vociferous proponents of temperance, arguing that abstention from alcohol would eventually lead to their freedom and equality within the United States. By observing racial strife over the course of the long nineteenth century, this thesis ultimately demonstrates how understandings of alcohol provide a window into the history of racial injustice in America.