Don't Ban Booze in January
Welcome back to the This Day In Esoteric Political History newsletter. Each week, a member of our team (or a friend of the show) gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American political history…
January 23
1845: Congress decides that all national elections in the United States will take place on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November
1980: President Jimmy Carter reinstates the Selective Service System, requiring men to register for the draft amid Cold War tensions
1997: Madeleine Albright is sworn in as the first female Secretary of State in U.S. history
January 24
1909 : The administration of William Howard Taft has gone completely possum crazy — and is desperately trying to make “Billy Possum” a mascot along the lines of the Teddy Bear
1945: The town of Grand Rapids, Michigan becomes the first town in the country to add fluoride to its drinking water
1961: A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina
1977: Amy Carter, the youngest child of President Jimmy and First Lady Rosalynn Carter, is enrolled in the fourth grade at Stevens Elementary School. Stevens had been opened in 1868 as one of Washington's first public schools for African American children. Amy Carter's first day at Stevens was widely reported by the media, which noted she was 12 minutes late because of rush-hour traffic and that she had the same regular school lunch of hot dogs and beans as her classmates
1989: Infamous serial killer Ted Bundy is executed in Florida, marking the end of a reign of terror involving numerous young women and girls
January 25
1996: Billy Bailey becomes the last person to be hanged in the United States
January 26
1918: During WWI, the U.S. government promotes meatless and wheatless days to conserve food for the war effort
1964 : Margaret Chase Smith announces that she is running for the GOP nomination for president
1969: Free meals are being handed out to kids in Oakland, California as part of the Black Panther Party Free for Children Breakfast Program.
1998: President Bill Clinton publicly denies having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky
January 27
1838: Some 80 years before national prohibition, the country’s first liquor restriction was passed
1943: For the first time, American bombers target German cities, marking a significant escalation in the U.S. involvement in WWII
1967: A fire during a launch rehearsal for Apollo 1 kills three astronauts
January 28
1850 Senator Henry Clay introduces a series of resolutions aimed at trying to build compromise and forestall the Civil War.
1981: President Ronald Reagan lifts petroleum price controls, ending the 1979 energy crisis, and marking a shift towards free-market policies in the energy sector
January 29
2000: The Cuban relatives of Elian Gonzalez are in the United States arguing that the six-year-old child should be returned to Cuba — while his relatives in Miami and many in the Cuban-American community are fighting for him to be kept in the U.S.
2002: In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an ‘Axis of Evil’, shaping U.S. foreign policy.
2009: Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is removed from office amid corruption charges, including trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat.
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more. This week it’s Jody Avirgan’s turn at the typewriter.
One of the genuine pleasures of this show is that we’ve done so many episodes — I’ve managed to completely forget a good number of them. For instance, I have no memory of recording that episode about Tennessee banning alcohol in 1838 - 80 years before the national ban. I went back and listened, and there are a bunch of fun facts in there. For instance, in the 1830s, the average American drank more than 3 times as much alcohol as they do now (booze was weaker back then, but still). Tennessee had two temperance-focused newspapers! And, of course, just like 80 years later, a massive black market and underground culture of alcohol sprung up, immediately. People are very resourceful.
Just a couple weeks ago, we did an episode on the first few days of the Volstead Act went into effect, and many of the same patterns emerged. (One lesson across time: maybe don’t outlaw drinking in the dead of winter?) In both conversations, we talked about how the temperance movement was a mix of legal battles and social pressure, with a clear sense of morality at the center. In both conversations, Kellie pointed out that temperance movement and the anti-slavery movement were closely linked, often with women at the heart of it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about these kinds of movements lately. It’s not enough to just fight a big political battle, or legal battle. It helps to stay small and build from there. And the engine of it all has to be a deep moral conviction. Check in with your humanity. It’s the thing that’ll get us through the long dark days. A stiff drink helps too.
More Esoterica
For more on Prohibition and “The Brew Deal,” we were just tipped off to this recent book on the impact of beer’s legal return in 1932, and the role it played getting the U.S. out of its depression.
If you were as hung up on the statues and paintings behind Donald Trump during his inauguration as you were about the billionaires in between, Chad Pergram has you covered.
You thought we weren’t going to link to a New Yorker article on “Britain’s Badger Wars” ???
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