Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State
“I am opposed to gay and expensive dressing, and I am opposed to balls — or hugging schools, I call them. I warn all boys against marrying ball room girls. I tell them if the girls practice hugging strange men before marriage they are likely to have the same taste afterwards.”
— Carry A. Nation, quoted in “‘Smashes’ Everything in Sight” (News & Observer, July 30, 1907)
“By drawing those at the lower end of the economic scale into an illicit enterprise, bootlegging and moonshining in the Jim Crow South had the unintended effect of blurring lines of segregation….
“The African-American newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier reported with dry humor one North Carolina reference: ‘If white and Negro preachers understood each other and worked together as well as white and Negro bootleggers, a large part of our interracial troubles would come to a speedy end.’ ”
— From “The War on Alcohol: Prohibition and the Rise of the American State” by
On this day in 1902: In Charlotte, J. Luther Snyder dispenses the first Coca-Cola bottled in the Carolinas. Until now Coke had been available only at soda fountains.
Snyder will recall that business is mediocre until the arrival of Prohibition in Charlotte in 1905: “Eighteen saloons, two breweries. . . . I had a terrible time selling soft drinks with that kind of competition.”
— “Yes, Dear, a Battleship; No, Dear, I’m Cold-Sober”
— Ken Burns missed quite a scene at the Eureka Saloon.
— $30 for a year’s worth of “Freedom, Sacrifice, Memory.”
— Memphis, Gibson. Nashville, Fender. Asheville, Moog.
— “We wish to negotiate with you about the Bodys of the twins….”
“North Carolina’s Dry Senator Cameron Morrison threw the meeting [of the Democratic National Committee] into wild confusion with another loud speech….
“His attacks on Chairman [John Jacob] Raskob for injecting Prohibition into the meeting brought boos and hisses from the audience. Angrily he exclaimed: ‘Oh, your jeering methods, your hisses! But understand you’ll never tie the Democratic party down to death and destruction for lack of men who scorn your hisses and defy your unfair methods…. If the Democracy would cease this foolishness over liquor, we could go forward to a great triumph –‘
” ‘What have you got in your locker?’ cried a heckler.”
— From Time magazine, March 16, 1931