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Temperance
2 articles on Temperance
Temperance
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 2853 Includes: Bibliography | Bibliography[This entry contains two subentries dealing with the development of temperance as an issue in black activism, and the black leaders of the temperance movement. The first article provides a discussion of temperance and its ties to the slave trade until 1830, while the second article focuses on the temperance reform movement from 1830 to 1865, including the roots of this movement in evangelical Christianity.] Although temperance eventually joined antislavery as a major social reform movement of the nineteenth century, efforts to curtail drinking did not ignite the passions of most blacks in the antebellum years. This lack of interest in temperance stemmed from the fact that few saw the consumption of alcohol as a matter of life and death. Concerns about drinking lacked the urgency associated with antislavery. Temperance began to develop as an issue ...
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Source: Black Women in America, Second Edition
Black women's historic involvement with the politics of alcohol consumption moved along several fronts across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. First was their temperance work in churches and women's clubs during the nineteenth century, through which they developed a special role in community betterment activities. Second was their role in national and international organizations like the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), a group that advocated for personal abstention from drink and, eventually, an end to the legal sale of alcohol in the United States. Finally, black women's activism in the twentieth century fragmented significantly due to adoption of hard line racial exclusion by white-led temperance organizations as well as to the emergence of urban working class and youth resistance to infringements on their social habits. Though an understanding and appreciation ...
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