Thursday, January 22, 2015

A Part of the Public Discourse

The month of January has been full.  Full of getting back in the swing of a new semester.  Full of getting my children back to school after a fun filled vacation.  And still quite full from all the eating that was done in December!  But it has also been full of public speaking events.

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak about the 1920s in Indiana, detailing to a local group the rise and fall of the second Ku Klux Klan.  This week, I talked to another local group about Prohibition in the 1920s, and got to be part of a panel at the Indiana State Museum to discuss Indiana's "blue laws," pertaining especially liquor laws that grew out of Prohibition around Sunday liquor sales.  Next week, there will be another talk to another local group about the second Klan in Indiana.

Why all the sudden interest again in the 1920s? Of course, I'd like to think it has to do with the new literature on the topics (including my own work on the Reverend Edward S. Shumaker--published by the University of Notre Dame Press in 2009, and my more recent work on how museums have interpreted the dry years--which was published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2014), Ken Burn's miniseries, and the recent exhibits at places like the Indiana Historical Society and at the National Constitution Center.  There is also the analogies between alcohol prohibition and drug legalization efforts.

But there is more to it than that.  Prohibition forces us to talk about religion, politics, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, the nature of business, race, law, rural life, international relations, the Constitution....the list goes on and on and on! It remains timely, topical, interesting, and very much part of the public discourse.

There are few issues that cut across issues in American History like Prohibition.  That is probably why people come out to hear about over 80 years after it was repealed.  And that  is probably why, even though my interests take me in other directions, I will come back to it again at some point.

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