In 1933 Americans did something they had never done before: they voted
to repeal an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Eighteenth
Amendment, which for 13 years had prohibited the manufacture and sale of
alcoholic beverages, was nullified by the passage of another amendment,
the Twenty-First. Many factors helped create this remarkable turn of
events. One factor that was essential, Kenneth D. Rose here argues, was
the presence of a large number of well-organized women promoting
repeal.
Even more remarkable than the appearance of these women on the political
scene was the approach they took to the politics of repeal.
Intriguingly, the arguments employed by repeal women and by prohibition
women were often mirror images of each other, even though the women on
the two sides of the issue pursued diametrically opposed political
agendas. Rose contends that a distinguishing feature of the women's
repeal movement was an argument for home protection, a social feminist
ideology that women repealists shared with the prohibitionist women of
the Women's Christian Temperance Union. The book surveys the women's
movement to repeal national prohibition and places it within the
contexts of women's temperance activity, women's political activity
during the 1920s, and the campaign for repeal.
While recent years have seen much-needed attention devoted to the
recovery of women's history, conservative women have too often been
overlooked, deliberately ignored, or written off as unworthy of
scrutiny. With American Women and the Repeal of Prohibition, Kenneth
Rose fleshes out a crucial chapter in the history of American women and
culture.
