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40 Historical Markers on the Road to Prohibition

Khalid Elhassan December 2, 2019 31 min

Black and white - Monochrome — 19th century Brewery. Pintrest

20. The Sole Civic Organization To Ever Change the Constitution

Throughout America’s history, there has never been a lobbying group as powerful as the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). Through a sustained political pressure campaign, it managed to achieve its goal in spectacular fashion on January 16^th, 1919, when the Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, establishing Prohibition, was ratified.

When Prohibition went into effect a year later, the ASL declared on the date of its victory that: “at one minute past midnight… a new nation will be born“. It had taken them decades of hard work to get that far.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.