Anti-Saloon League [1]

Anti-Saloon League [2]

by Ginny Orvedahl, 2006

The North Carolina Anti-Saloon League [3] was organized in 1902, with J. W. Bailey as chairman of its executive committee. Bailey, a native of Warrenton, was also a U.S. senator. Those involved in the temperance forces in the state had successfully eliminated the legal sale of liquor in many towns by using local option elections, a campaign led by Bailey.

Many rural communities also eliminated the sale of liquor by obtaining acts of incorporation by the General Assembly [4]. The Democratic-controlled legislature, at the urging of the Anti-Saloon League, passed the Watts Act in 1903 [5]. This law prohibited the manufacture and sale of liquor except in incorporated towns. In 1907 the Anti-Saloon League launched a successful campaign for statewide prohibition: in May 1908 voters approved a measure that made North Carolina the first state in the nation to enact a total ban on the manufacture and sale of alcohol. In January 1919 the Eighteenth Amendment [6] of the Constitution was ratified by Congress, making Prohibition a national policy.

References:

Hugh T. Lefler, North Carolina History Told by Contemporaries (1948).

William S. Powell, North Carolina through Four Centuries (1989).

Additional Resources:

Anti-Saloon League, DocSouth: http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/utterance/menu.html [3]

Image Credit:

A pamphlet distributed by the Anti-Saloon League of Charlotte. Image courtesy of DocSouth, UNC. Available from http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/antisaloon/antisaloon.html [2] (accessed May 31, 2012).

Subjects:

N.C. Industrial Revolution (1900-1929) [7]

World War I (1914-1918) [8]

Law and legal history [9]

Societies, clubs, and organizations [10]

UNC Press [11]

Authors:

Orvedahl, Ginny [12]

From:

Encyclopedia of North Carolina, University of North Carolina Press. [13]

1 January 2006 | Orvedahl, Ginny