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Dissertation Information for Harold Paul Thompson

NAME:
- Harold Paul Thompson

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- History

SCHOOL:
- Emory University (USA) (2005)

ADVISORS:
- James L Roark

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Leroy Davis Jr
- E Brooks Holifield

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: Race, temperance, and prohibition in the postbellum South: Black Atlanta, 1865--1890

Abstract: "Race, Temperance, and Prohibition in the Postbellum South: Black Atlanta, 1865-1890" examines the black experience with the temperance movement in Atlanta following the Civil War. The study begins with an overview of Black Atlanta's development between 1865 and 1890 and a review of the importance of alcohol to the black community. The next two chapters analyze the efforts of missionary-sponsored schools and the New York-based National Temperance Society and Publication House to educate freedmen about temperance. Chapter four discusses how Atlanta's local black leaders sought to spread temperance values through their churches and fraternal organizations. I conclude with two chapters analyzing Atlanta's 1885 and 1887 "local option" prohibition elections, which highlight the politics of the 1880s and the various ways black leaders interacted with the movement. This study attempts to rectify both the failure of most temperance historians to incorporate the black experience into their analysis and the omission of reform from the historiography on recently emancipated southern blacks. These omissions have artificially separated African-Americans from the very significant history of eighteenth-century American reform. No matter how great the difficulties faced by the freedmen in the wake of slavery they were just as much concerned about regional and national reform efforts as other United States citizens. I argue that freedmen education efforts were deeply rooted in antebellum temperance sentiments, not the reality of black drinking after emancipation. The nature of northern education created very unequal temperance sentiment among the freedmen, but once it entered the political arena as prohibition, the movement assumed great meaning for many individuals as well as the corporate black community. Most blacks took an opportunistic approach to prohibition, supporting it as long as they believed their vote promised some advantage to their race. But there were always principled black prohibitionists who supported the reform regardless of the lack of political gain and the rise of disfranchisement in the early 1890s. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the freedmen took the temperance movement seriously, and scholars must begin to grapple directly with the implications of this fact.

MPACT Scores for Harold Paul Thompson

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-02-11 10:01:42

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Students under Harold Paul Thompson

ADVISEES:
- None

COMMITTEESHIPS:
- None