American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition (The American Social Experience Book 17)

In 1933, Americans voted to repeal the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages for 13 years. The Twenty-First Amendment nullified it. Kenneth D. Rose argues that a significant factor in this outcome was the organized effort of women who promoted repeal. Rose examines how repeal women and prohibition women often used mirror-image arguments despite pursuing opposing political goals. He contends that repeal women employed an argument for home protection rooted in social feminist ideology—the same ideology shared by prohibitionist women of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The book surveys the women's movement to repeal national prohibition and situates it within women's temperance activity, women's political activity during the 1920s, and the broader repeal campaign. Rose addresses a gap in historical scholarship: conservative women have often been overlooked or dismissed as unworthy of study. This work recovers a crucial chapter in American women's and cultural history.