ABSTRACT
The mourners lifted the casket on to their shoulders and marched through the streets of Broadway. Dressed in dark suits and black dresses, there was no crying or sobbing, just glasses of champagne and wine lifted high in a final farewell to King Alcohol. It was the night before Prohibition, January 17, 1920, and people across America were either mourning the end of alcohol or celebrating the beginning of a dry country. The members of the Temperance Movement and the Dry voters celebrated with church services that welcomed in a new age of sobriety. Famous preacher Billy Sunday and some men sewed vests with special pockets that they filled with flasks of alcohol and then simply put a coat over the top declared America a better and safer place now that the production of alcohol was illegal. Thousands of people were sure that he was right and a new era of peace had arrived in America.
