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Women's Christian Temperance Union

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The Political Chaos and Unexpected Activism of the Post-Civil War Era

Charles Postel on the temperance crusade that galvanized the American women's movement.
by Charles Postel via Literary Hub on August 21, 2019
A boy scout yawns as he holds a U.S. flag at an event in Maine in 1984.
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The Christian Nationalism at the Heart of Jim Crow America

The Trump campaign is signaling that it intends to make the U.S. a "Christian nation." Here's what that idea looked like in history.
by William Horne via Made By History on October 17, 2024
Black-and-white image of two men behind bar

The Gilded Age In a Glass: From Innovation to Prohibition

Cocktails — the ingredients, the stories, the pageantry — can reveal more than expected about the Gilded Age.
by Zachary Veith via The Gotham Center on December 28, 2021
A group of contestants at an Emeryville walkathon.

Inside the Sketchy Dance Marathon Craze SF's Women Helped Stop

Dance marathons were essentially the Netflix dating show of the Great Depression.
by Greg Keraghosian via SFGATE on April 11, 2021
Members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

The Secret Feminist History of the Temperance Movement

The radical women behind the original “dump him” discourse.
by Nina Renata Aron via Medium on March 5, 2021
Artistic collage of black leaders surrounded by images associated with prohibition.

The Forgotten History of Black Prohibitionism

We often think of the temperance movement as driven by white evangelicals set out to discipline Black Americans and immigrants. That history is wrong.
by Mark Lawrence Schrad via Politico Magazine on February 6, 2021

A Complete Halt to the Liquor Traffic: Drink and Disease in the 1918 Epidemic

In Philadelphia, authorities faced a familiar challenge: to protect public health while maintaining individuals' rights to act, speak, and assemble freely.
by E. Thomas Ewing via Nursing Clio on May 19, 2020

The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America

How three late 19th century equality movements failed to promote equality.
by Eric Foner via The Nation on September 24, 2019
North Street, Boston, in 1894.

The Universal Cause

A history of reformers targeting sex trafficking in pursuit of other aims.
by Hallie Lieberman via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 6, 2019

How Midwestern Suffragists Used Anti-Immigrant Fervor to Help Gain the Vote

Women fighting for the ballot saw German men as backward, ignorant, and less worthy of citizenship than themselves.
by Sara Egge via Zócalo Public Square on September 17, 2018

Born a Slave, Emma Ray Was The Saint of Seattle’s Slums

Emma Ray was a leader in battles against poverty, and for temperance.
by Lorraine McConaghy via Crosscut on February 26, 2016
Political cartoon of smokers.

Puff, Puff? Pass!: The Anti-Tobacco Writings of Margaret Woods Lawrence

Reformers linked tobacco use to a deterioration of social and familial values, a habit that disrupted the sanctity of the home.
by Brian Fehler via Commonplace on April 8, 2025
Collage of Matilda Gage and good and bad witches from "The Wizard of Oz" and "Wicked."

The Feminist Who Inspired the Witches of Oz

The story of suffragist Matilda Gage, the woman behind the curtain whose life story captivated her son-in-law L. Frank Baum as he wrote his classic novel.
by Evan I. Schwartz via Smithsonian on November 18, 2024
Political cartoon of clothed animals and Anthony Comstock bathing clothed, and cowering at underwear in a store window.

The History and Legacy of Anthony Comstock and the Comstock Laws

As the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes to revive the Comstock Act, this seven-part forum explores the Act’s influence on American life.
by Lauren MacIvor Thompson, Allison K. Lange, Kimberly A. Hamlin, Nicholas L. Syrett, Cathleen D. Cahill, Magdalene Zier, Andrew Wender Cohen via SHGAPE Blog on September 24, 2024
Sign for the Community of Faith church in Houston, lit up at night near dark railroad tracks.

The Racist Roots of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Sex Scandal “Apocalypse”

The Southern Baptist Convention is tearing itself apart over its leaders’ long-running cover-up of abusers in its ranks. But there’s a deeper reckoning below.
by Audrey Clare Farley via The New Republic on May 30, 2022
Arizona State Senator Wendy Rogers speaking before the appearance of former president Donald Trump at a Save America Rally on Jan 15th in Florence, Arizona.
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The Bond That Explains Why Some on the Christian Right Support Putin’s War

Russia has become an ally in a global movement.
by Bethany Moreton via Made By History on March 5, 2022
Carrie Nation

Carrie Nation Spent the Last Decade of Her Life Violently Destroying Bars. She Had Her Reasons. 

Nobody was listening, so she brought some rocks.
by Mark Lawrence Schrad via Slate on September 7, 2021

Women's Clubs and the "Lost Cause"

Women's clubs were popular after the Civil War among white and Black women. But white clubwomen used their influence to ingrain racist curriculum in schools.
by Matthew Wills, Joan Marie Johnson via JSTOR Daily on August 24, 2020
Program for the National American Woman Suffrage Association procession in Washington, DC, 1913, featuring a woman on a horse heralding votes for women and leading marchers toward the capitol.

The Thorny Road to the 19th Amendment

A new book chronicles the twists and turns of the 75-year-path to securing the vote for women.
by Ellen Carol DuBois, Lila Thulin via Smithsonian on March 18, 2020

The Hidden Story of Two African American Women

An historian discovers the portraits of two women all bound up in the pages of a 19th-century book.
by Martha S. Jones, Kate Clarke Lemay via The Conversation on September 9, 2019

The Internationalist History of the US Suffrage Movement

What we miss when we tell the story of women's rights activism as a strictly national tale.
by Katherine M. Marino via National Park Service on March 28, 2019

Dry Times in the Highest State: Colorado’s Prohibition Movement

Placing Colorado’s early adoption of Prohibition in social and political context.
by Sam Bock via Erstwhile: A History Blog on February 27, 2019
A political cartoon of Carrie Nation in a destroyed bar

Why Do We Blame Women For Prohibition?

One hundred years later, it’s time to challenge a long-held bias.
by Mark Lawrence Schrad via Politico Magazine on January 13, 2019

Private Matter or Public Crisis? Defining and Responding to Domestic Violence

It is only recently that domestic abuse was identified as a serious, public social problem.
by Peggy Solic via Origins on July 15, 2015

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