Prohibition

Many women in the 1920s felt that alcohol made society currupt, led to crimes, and bad bahavior among many men. They felt that banning alcohol from being distributed and consumed would better the lives of the American people and lower the crime rate. Women worked very hard to get the message out that a new law prohibiting alcohol would benefit everyone and eventually the Volstead Act was passed in 1919 (also known as the Eighteenth Amendment) officially giving the women what they worked so hard to achieve. However, many people were not happy about this law and found ways around it.

It wasn't just gangsters and flappers who broke the laws of prohibition but even the average American found ways around the law. Members of the mafia and other organizations supplied speakeasies with illegal alcohol. Speakeasies were secret bars, clubs, and other locations that supplied alcohol to the public illegally. Police did the best that they could to regulate on these secret locations but many of them went undiscovered. They were not to be talked about outside of the locations.

Disrespect for the law and the growth of organized crime led to the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933. Congress decided that this was the best move to the nation due to the lack of support the new law recieved. It became very unpopular during The Great Depression in large cities. The Twenty-First Amendment declared prohibition unconstitutional and it officially repealed the laws of prohibition.