Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU)

Two Flyers, Women's Christian Temperance Union

[Photograph Woman's Christian Temperance Union float for the Decatur County Centennial parade, Bainbridge, Decatur County, Georgia, 1923]

Gainesville news (Gainesville, Ga.), Jan. 7, 1920

[Photograph of a horse-drawn wagon in parade supporting prohibition, Hawkinsville, Pulaski County, Georgia, 1915]

A flyer made by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) of Atlanta in 1880 supporting the prohibition of the sale and use of “intoxicating liquors.”
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center, Cornelius Hanleiter Papers.
Women and girls on a parade float sponsored by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Bainbridge, Georgia in 1923. A group of girls hold banners supporting the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes.
Courtesy of the Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia Collection.
An article in the Gainesville News discusses the process of enforcing prohibition laws next to a political cartoon that illustrates the apathy among law enforcement to implement the Eighteenth Amendment. January 7, 1920.
Courtesy of the Georgia Newspaper Project, Georgia Historic Newspapers.
A group of women and girls in a decorated, horse-drawn wagon participate in a parade supporting prohibition in Hawkinsville, Georgia in 1915.
Courtesy of the Georgia Archives, Vanishing Georgia Collection.

The temperance movement represented women’s initial foray into public reform. Southern women who became temperance advocates believed alcohol was the root of immorality and fostered an environment of crime and poverty where male breadwinners neglected their wives and children in favor of evenings spent wasting their wages at the saloon. Georgia’s first Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was formed in Atlanta in April of 1880 and other unions were quickly established throughout the state. Speaking in public for the first time, women of the WCTU warned of the evils of alcohol and campaigned for laws to restrict and abolish the sale of alcoholic beverages. While the WCTU had a brief victory in 1885 when Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, voted to go “dry” and forbid the sale of alcoholic beverages, female reformers struggled to convince state and local governments to enact lasting temperance measures. Lack of political support for temperance crusades prompted the National WCTU to endorse woman suffrage as a means to achieve prohibition, but unions in Georgia continued to oppose women’s voting rights in order to maintain their political ties with male civic and religious leaders, who generally held traditional notions of women’s social roles. While women of the WCTU won a major concession in 1907 with statewide prohibition in Georgia, the legacy of the WCTU was that it empowered women to engage in public battles and served as a springboard for female involvement in political issues throughout the Progressive Era and beyond.

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