Truth-Telling: Frances Willard and Ida B. Wells

Local Prohibition Campaigns

"Local option" was a strategy for prohibition that allowed a town's residents to vote on whether they would allow saloons or sales of liquor. Here Willard is stating that black voters were responsible for several of these measures being defeated. The best evidence suggests that black support for temperance in the South was actually strong, and black voters did not make the difference in these close elections.

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