Prohibition, the Cold War, and the Civil Rights Movement

The Purpose and Origins of Prohibition

The purpose of Prohibition was ostensibly to reduce alcohol-related crimes and the suffering caused by alcoholism on individuals, families — particularly women and children — and society as a whole. The Temperance Movement was widely supported by women's rights activists and abolitionists throughout its existence. Yet it was largely composed of rural, native-born Protestants, and a strong anti-immigrant sentiment ran through much of the movement. The virulently racist Ku Klux Klan, for example, also supported Prohibition.

Supporters of Prohibition and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment

In urban locations, sentiment toward Prohibition was far different. In general, religion was less influential in cities, and many people profited from selling alcohol. For European immigrants — particularly those from Catholic countries — alcohol held an important place in their cultural worldview. Although Prohibition may have appeared to be a benign attempt to protect women and children from alcoholic husbands and to prevent lawlessness and violence, there was also a clear social engineering project behind it: an attempt to make immigrant groups conform to a rigid and stereotypical vision of American identity.

This nativist dimension of Prohibition is significant. Rather than representing a purely moral or public-health initiative, the movement also served as a vehicle for pressuring immigrant communities to abandon Old World customs and assimilate on the terms dictated by the native-born Protestant majority.

Organized Crime, Speakeasies, and Prohibition's Unintended Consequences

A final group that came to support — and profit from — the era of Prohibition was organized crime. Because large segments of the population were unwilling to obey the law, criminal networks that offered access to alcohol grew substantially in strength and power during this period. Corrupt police officers and politicians also profited by turning a blind eye to violations of the law. Thanks in part to a general decline in respect for law enforcement fueled by hostility to Prohibition, overall crime increased.

Moonshine became popular in rural areas, manufactured secretly to evade authorities, while speakeasies — secret nightclubs where liquor was served — flourished in cities. Defying the law became a fun, social experience, and criminals were lionized rather than feared. Prohibition thus produced consequences that were the precise opposite of those its advocates had intended.

How the Cold War Advanced the Civil Rights Movement

Although World War II and the subsequent Cold War led to significant loss of life and devastating experiences for many Americans, the conflict did produce some positive benefits for the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. As African-American servicemen made a substantial contribution to the war effort, the nation was effectively pressured into granting some measures of equality, including the integration of the armed forces. The Cold War was also an ideological struggle, and America was similarly pressured into living up to its stated ideals of freedom and democracy, given its sharp criticism of the Soviet Union's oppression of Warsaw Pact nations and its own people.

Decolonization abroad also inspired many members of the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. was directly inspired by Gandhi to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience. There was also a new wave of sympathetic legal thinking on the U.S. Supreme Court, culminating in the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally declared the doctrine of "separate but equal" to be unconstitutional — the legal fiction that had permitted Jim Crow laws to persist across the South for decades.