Prohibition in Atlanta: Temperance, Tiger Kings & White Lightning

By Ron Smith and Mary O. Boyle

After the Civil War, state and national Prohibition galvanized in Atlanta the issues of classism, racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. While many consider flappers and gangsters the iconic images of the era, in reality, it was marked with temperance zealotry, blind tigers and white lightning. Georgia's protracted and intense battle changed the industrial and social landscapes of its capital city and unleashed a flood of illegal liquor that continually flowed in the wettest city in the South. Moonshine was the toast of the town from mill houses to the state capitol. The state eventually repealed prohibition, but the social, moral and legal repercussions still linger seventy years later. Join authors Ron Smith and Mary O. Boyle as they recount the colorful history of Atlanta's struggle to freely enjoy a drink.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Jun 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781625851352

Ron Smith

Ron Smith is the author of eleven books on management issues, business improvement, and business history. He lives in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Book preview

BOYLE

INTRODUCTION

The history of prohibition in Atlanta is different from that of the young flapper sipping her cocktail in a Manhattan speakeasy. She and her big-city companions would have found themselves in a foreign world in the South.

Reconstruction, race relations and the vain struggle of the social elite to maintain its position in society set the stage for a prolonged period of alcohol prohibition in Georgia. The resulting social, moral and legal history of this battle had consequences that still influence the Greater Atlanta area.

Although this book focuses mainly on Fulton County and the city of Atlanta, it also refers to areas that supplied the city with prohibition booze, including North Georgia and the Dixie Highway as a vein for alcohol supplies to the city from various islands in the Caribbean.

The general public is familiar with national Prohibition and its impact on the country. Much has already been written on the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. The focus of this book is local and state prohibition periods and their effects. Few people realize the extent of the combined prohibition timeframe in Georgia and, therefore, Atlanta. Our aim is to illuminate this aspect of the city’s history.

You will see variations of a few words in this book. Temperance is used in several contexts, as it was in history and, to an extent, today. First, it is used to denote a moderate consumption of alcohol. Second, it is used to define a social movement and the sentiment of the people within it. Dry with a capital D denotes the prohibitionists, while dry with a lower case d means a geographic area of legal alcohol prohibition (e.g. the county had gone dry). Wet with a capital W denotes the anti-prohibitionists, while wet with a lowercase w means a geographic area of legal alcohol sales or illegal traffic.

The spelling whiskey and not whisky is used both in historical context and in modern form, as this is the developing trend among historians. If appropriate, a historical name of a beverage or substance is used supported by its modern name in parentheses. Quotes are provided as originally written or stated.

The reader will notice in several drawings a small caricature of a gopher tortoise. The Gopher was the historical mascot of the Atlanta Constitution.

The story of Atlanta prohibition cannot reasonably be captured in one book. Several theses and dissertations document this time period, and they, by necessity, also focus on a portion of the vast amount of information compiled. This book is a thoughtful cross-section of Atlanta’s prohibition history, highlighting specific topics and events to give a general understanding of this dynamic period.

Chapter 1

FROM FRONTIER FRENZY TO

SEMI-DOMESTICATED DRINKING

In its earlier frontier days, Atlanta had a reputation as a crossroads village that attracted rowdies, vagabonds, bootleggers, and prostitutes.

—Tera Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom, 1997

THE FRONTIER TOWN OF ATLANTA

In 1837, roughly six miles west of the town of Decatur in the Georgia wilderness, Western and Atlantic Railroad engineers studied the topography of land near the Chattahoochee River. Here they planned a terminus point for a future railroad, which would establish a more efficient means of commerce from the Mississippi River region to the Atlantic seaboard. As they drove a survey stake in the ground, engineers set in motion a series of events that would create a burgeoning railroad hub in the southeastern United States.

Wagon roads crisscrossed the backwoods, following what were once Native American trails, and a few taverns existed at these crossroads. The closest to future Atlanta was Whitehall Tavern—named for its unique whitewashed façade. A small hamlet generally known as Terminus sprung up around the end of the Western and Atlantic Railroad line once it was developed. Even with the early rail line in place, there were few amenities in the village. In lieu of a designated tavern, every house acted as an improvised inn for travelers. Local unemployed railroad workers ran their own drinking and gambling houses.

As other railroad lines began tying into the Western and Atlantic, the future of Terminus brightened. The growing town was renamed Marthasville in 1843. From its early days, Marthasville was a destination for rural residents to barter their homegrown products for manufactured items. According to Atlanta and Its Builders, one of these rural products was a very crude species of corn whiskey.

The Marthasville post office sat at the corner of the road that led to Peachtree Creek (Peachtree Street) and the road that led to the town of Decatur (Decatur Street). In the back of this early municipal building, Moses Formwalt ran a metal shop and a barroom. A popular item from his shop was a copper distillation pot, commonly called a still. These stills were used by residents all over Georgia to make whiskey, brandy or any other distilled alcohol for which they had ingredients. His adjoining barroom is considered early Atlanta’s first saloon due to its simple and open (not tavern-like) layout.

Once Marthasville became a railroad hub, long-haul wagon traffic began to flow into the town. These covered wagons delivered goods between the trains and rural Georgia. The town was quickly becoming the trade center of the region—a distinction that remains today. Regardless of growth, Marthasville was still a frontier town. Much to the consternation of the three primary religious denominations (Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian), drinking, gambling and prostitution openly flourished. In these early days, Decatur Street began its infamous history as the sporting section of town.

Decatur Street between Peachtree and Pryor, now the border of the Georgia State University campus, was historically known as Murrell’s Row. The area was named after noted Tennessee murderer John Murrell, who was apparently a common topic of conversation in this district. Murrell’s Row is described as a series of wooden shacks built from discarded lumber. Half of these single-story structures were saloons. Drunken brawls were an everyday occurrence, especially on weekends.

In 1845, the town of Marthasville was renamed Atlanta. A few years later, the town of Atlanta incorporated as a city, and Moses Formwalt—the still maker and saloon owner at the end of Murrell’s Row—was voted in as Atlanta’s first mayor.

ROWDYISM, SNAKE NATION AND SLAB TOWN

Atlanta was divided into two distinct political parties during the mid-nineteenth century: the Free and Rowdy Party and the Moral Party. Atlanta’s first three mayors were members of the Rowdies. Mayors of the Free and Rowdy Party tended to be sympathetic to the saloon business and lenient on gambling and prostitution, which they saw as an integral part of city life. Generous for its small population in the mid-1800s, Atlanta sported forty saloons.

The Moral Party consisted of the evangelical Protestant congregations from the newly constructed churches and some of the people involved with city politics (what little of it existed). The Moral Party stressed temperance in hopes that it would reduce the civil disruption and sin in its city’s midst. Temperance in this context meant the moderate use of alcohol as a beverage or complete abstinence by one’s personal choice. Despite the Free and Rowdy Party’s laissez-faire position, temperance-minded citizens put pressure on the residents of Murrell’s Row. Many of the inhabitants of the area moved to the edge of the city limits and set up two shantytowns. These towns were well known for their vice and immorality.

Slab Town, named after the crude lumber and construction debris from which it was built, was located where Grady Hospital now sits. Snake Nation (currently Castleberry Hill) was west and south of downtown Atlanta on the other side of the tracks. Many legends exist about why the area was called Snake Nation. One revolves around a Native American healer who sold snake medicine in the area. A second recalls a large number of snake oil salesmen in the area. The third is based on the residents of Snake Nation being mean as a snake.

Atlanta’s fourth mayor, Jonathan Norcross (1851–1852), was a member of the Moral Party. Son of a clergyman, he was described as highly temperance minded and intolerant of civil disturbance. To him and the presiding religious folk, the immoral sections of Atlanta needed to go away. He put moral, social and legal pressure on the elements of Atlanta life with which he did not agree. The rowdier elements pushed back.

One night, in response to Mayor Norcross’s campaign against immorality, members of the Free and Rowdy Party traveled to the town of Decatur and filched the city’s ornamental cannon. This piece of artillery from the War of 1812 was brought back to Atlanta and placed in front of the mayor’s general store. The cannon was loaded with sand and gravel and fired, doing minimal damage to the front of the building. Fortunately for anyone inside, no cannonballs could be located. However, the message was loud and clear.

What the rowdies failed to take into account was the organization, fortitude and zeal of the Moral Party. It was sufficiently organized to elect Jonathan Norcross and was backed by a growing church congregation. By 1847, the Sons of Temperance (a secretive temperance society) had established a chapter in the young town.

After arresting several of the leaders of the rowdies, a large group of Atlanta’s men gathered to do something about the dens of iniquity. In a disturbing foreshadowing of future violence, they donned white hoods and attacked the residents of Slab Town and Snake Nation. After driving away the residents with whips and forceful removal from their homes, the hooded men burned the towns to the ground. This tolled the end of these rowdy shantytowns but not the demise of Decatur Street and Castleberry Hill.

SEMI-DOMESTICATED DRINKING

With diligence and a growing law enforcement body, Atlanta learned to better enforce its city criminal code. This improvement separated the lawful public’s social alcohol consumption from the criminal element of society. For example, most properly licensed and taxed saloons would not tolerate violent behavior or other activities that might compromise their profitable operations. The atmosphere of the drinking establishment resumed that of a social meeting place. The saloon now functioned not only as a place to get a drink but also as a social gathering spot, especially for lower-income workers. A saloon might provide mail service for those who did not have their own places or were new in town and even help people find a job. These functions were very similar to those carried out by eighteenth-century taverns.

In contrast to many taverns in history, the Victorian-era saloon did not generally welcome women. The sexes increasingly occupied different spaces, in part due to industrialization. The spaces were associated with gender roles: men went to work in segregated factories, and women stayed home in the domestic sphere. Drinking in public was labeled a male activity, since it occurred outside the home. From earlier social experiences in frontier life (like that of Slab Town, Snake Nation and Murrell’s Row), women’s public drinking became associated with sexual depravity. The Victorian mentality held any alcohol consumption by women suspect; drinking was treated as a disease that directly affected children’s lives and the family structure. The respectable women who could afford it drank in private at home. Those who wanted to drink but did not have family support often became users of patent medicines.

Detail of the Burns and Dwyer Billiard Saloon, circa 1866, after the burning of Atlanta. Photo by G.N. Barnard, Library of Congress.

THE SALOON

With a more industrialized population, the saloon became the preferred social meeting and drinking place for men. Laborers and a portion of the growing white middle class drank the majority of their beverage alcohol at the saloon. The best saloons had gas lamp fixtures hung from pressed tin or ceramic-lined ceilings. A straight, highly ornate wooden bar ran the length of the main room, complete with a brass rail for propping the foot. Behind the bar was an equally impressive mirror for reflection of light and to make the place seem bigger. Highly polished tile or wooden floors ran through the establishment. Side and back rooms often contained tables and chairs with carpeted floors and rich décor.