Temperance and the Negro

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 16, 1908

Temperance and the Negro

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, in an address at New Rochelle, N. Y., on March 1, told of the good results following prohibition in the South. He declared that the abolition of the barroom had proved a blessing to the negro second only to the abolition of slavery. He said in part:—

Two thirds of the mobs, lynchings, and burnings at the stake are the result of bad whisky getting into the stomachs of bad black men and bad white men.

The great temperance movement which has swept the South, has been without parallel in history. Now that I have lived to see the whisky shops and open barrooms done away with, there is no telling what other reforms may take place anywhere. You little realize how much it means to the colored race.

Without the expenditure of money a mighty revolution has been accomplished. To-day we find only thirteen counties in Kentucky where whisky is sold under licenses; in Tennessee in only four cities and two towns. In the State of Florida there are only fourteen counties where saloons and barrooms exist. They are almost extinct in North Carolina.

After next Christmas every barroom in Mississippi and Alabama will close up. Already every barroom in Georgia has gone out of business, and for the first time in forty years the Atlanta Journal came out and said that not a single black man was in the city prison.

Herein, then, is a tangible reason for the decrease in the number of lynchings reported last year.