Timeline of events important to Prohibition

Prohibition timeline

Calls to ban the production and sale of alcohol in the U.S. started nearly a century before Prohibition, with the creation of temperance societies and growing support of the abstinence movement. Here are some key dates in the push for Prohibition and its eventual repeal:

1826: American Society for the Promotion of Temperance forms in Boston.

1836: American Temperance Union forms through the merger of two national groups.

1851: Maine becomes the first state to prohibit the manufacturing and sale of alcohol. (The law was repealed five years later.)

1869: Prohibition Party of the United States is founded, becoming America’s first — and now oldest — third party. James Black, a co-founder from Lancaster, became its first presidential candidate in 1872.

1873: World’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union forms in Hillsboro, Ohio.

1893: Anti-Saloon League is founded in Oberlin, Ohio, then organized as a national society in 1895.

1913: Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and Anti-Saloon League march on Washington to demand a Prohibition constitutional amendment.

Feb. 3, 1913: States ratify the 16th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1909 to establish a federal income tax — which reduces the government’s need to rely on revenue generated by taxing the alcohol industry (more than $200 million in 1910).

May 9, 1917: Rotary Club of Pittsburgh calls for a temporary prohibition of alcohol during World War I as a means of preserving wheat, corn, rye and barley used by distillers and brewers for the war effort.

Dec. 18, 1917: Congress passes the 18th Amendment, which would restrict the manufacture and sale of alcohol. States are given seven years to ratify the measure.

Jan. 16, 1919: 18th Amendment is ratified when Nebraska becomes 36th state to bar the “manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes”; 46 of 48 states eventually support prohibition, with Connecticut and Rhode Island as the only holdouts. (Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.)

June 4, 1919: Congress passes the 19th Amendment to give women the right to vote; ratified by the states on Aug. 18, 1920. Women were instrumental in the temperance movement.

June 30, 1919: Wartime Prohibition Act takes effect, restricting the sale of beverages containing more than 2.75% alcohol.

July 1, 1919: Commonly referred to at the time as June “Thirsty-First” — the first day after wartime prohibition started.

Oct. 28, 1919: Congress overrides President Woodrow Wilson’s veto of the National Prohibition Act, commonly called the Volstead Act, which makes it illegal to manufacture beverages with more than a half-percent of alcohol and provides enforcement of the 18th Amendment. It is named for Andrew Volstead, a Minnesota Republican who served as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and introduced the bill.

Jan. 17, 1920: The United States goes dry, shutting down the country’s fifth-largest industry.

October 1929: The Wall Street crash begins, ushering in the Great Depression.

November 1932: Franklin Delano Roosevelt is elected president after campaigning, among other things, to end Prohibition.

Dec. 5, 1933: 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition is ratified.

Sources: Library of Congress, National Archives, National Constitution Center, Heinz History Center, Federal Reserve