Prohibition Ends

This Day in History: December 5, 1933


The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified,
repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end
to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America.
Photo Credit: mosbergowners



It was the end of an America gone dry but how did it all begin?

Before Prohibition...


George Greisser, brew master for
Reisch Brewery before prohibition
(Photograph from Sangamon Valley Collection,
Lincoln Library, Springfield, Illinois.)

By 1830, the average American over 15 years old consumed nearly seven gallons of pure alcohol a year – three times as much as we drink today – and alcohol abuse (primarily by men) was wreaking havoc on the lives of many, particularly in an age when women had few legal rights and were utterly dependent on their husbands for sustenance and support. . .
 
Read MORE @PBS.org which concludes with...
 
. . .At 12:01 A.M. on January 17, 1920, the amendment went into effect and Prohibitionists rejoiced that at long last, America had become officially, and (they hoped) irrevocably, dry. But just a few minutes later, six masked bandits with pistols emptied two freight cars full of whiskey from a rail yard in Chicago, another gang stole four casks of grain alcohol from a government bonded warehouse, and still another hijacked a truck carrying whiskey.

And that was just the beginning...
 
Americans were about to discover that making Prohibition the law of the land had been one thing; enforcing it would be another.

During Prohibition...

The Prohibition era lasted from 1920 through 1933, and was an attempt to legislate morality. It took a Constitutional amendment to enact it, and another one to repeal it. The attempt to decrease the "evils" of alcohol actually created more - and new - types of crime.

Read MORE about The Prohibition Era...

National History Day: Triumph and Tragedy



Detroit police inspecting equipment

found in a clandestine underground brewery during the Prohibition era.

Picture courtesy of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
 

Prohibition Photo Gallery @pbs.org

 

After Prohibition... 

 

After the repeal of the 18th Amendment,
some states continued Prohibition by maintaining statewide temperance laws.
Mississippi, the last dry state in the Union, ended Prohibition in 1966.
Photo Credit: mosbergowners

  

Happy days are here again!
Photo Credit: mosbergowners

Related Article:

Check out this cool photo: Some History
"Alcohol, discovered by Prohibition agents during a raid on an illegal distillery, pours out of upper windows of three-story storefront in Detroit during Prohibition, 1929” (Retronaut)