1. Today’s Topic: Prohibition and Organized Crime
the roaring twenties
Today’s Topic: Prohibition and Organized Crime

2. By the end of class today, you should be able to:
Student objectives
By the end of class today, you should be able to:
Identify the three main goals of Prohibition
Explain the connection between Prohibition and Organized Crime
Evaluate the validity of arguments by those who wanted to prohibit alcohol and those who wanted to keep it legal in the United States

3. Warm up activity
Consider what might happen if the making, selling, importing, and exporting of soft drinks were made illegal.
Do you think that all Americans would stop drinking soda? Why or Why not?
What unwanted effects might such a law have?
Name reasons why some Americans would want to BAN soft drinks.

4. Main goals of prohibition
Eliminate drunkenness and the domestic violence that often came along with it.
Get rid of saloons, where prostitution, gambling, and other perceived vices thrived.
Prevent absenteeism and on-the-job accidents that drunkenness often caused.

5. Practical teetotallers
Though many prohibitionists believed that the consumption of alcohol was an evil of society, others stressed that the grain used for producing alcohol should be used instead to produce food.

6. Poem about prohibition
“Coward, monster, vicious brute. Friend to thief and prostitute. Heartless, Godless, Hell’s delight. Crude by day and lewd by night. Conscience dulled by demon rum. Liquor, thy name’s Delirium.”
Funeral for Alcohol:
I Never Knew I had Such a Wonderful Wife until the Town Went Dry

7. enforcement
Once Prohibition becomes official through both the 18th amendment and the Volstead Act of 1919, it then becomes difficult to enforce.
Can you think of any laws that are not very strictly enforced by the police force?
Why do you think this is so?

8. Disrespect for law enforcement
Many citizens who wanted to drink alcohol viewed police as “dog catchers with badges.”
The federal government organizes a taskforce specifically aimed at curbing the transportation and consumption of alcohol.
Prohibition laws were enforced much more in rural areas than in the cities. Why so?

9. Vocab name drops
Bootleggers supplied illegal alcohol. They either brewed it themselves from corn, grain, or potatoes or they smuggled it in from Canada and the Caribbean.
Speakeasies were bars that operated illegally, usually in major cities.
A heavy gate usually blocked the entrance; needed to show a membership card to get in.
Other speakeasies were elaborately hidden.

10. Organized crime
Because supplying illegal liquor was a complex operation that brought in enormous amounts of revenue, organized crime was essential for its success.
Criminals like Al Capone flourished. He consolidated (peacefully or otherwise) control of bootlegging in Chicago.
Capone flaunted his wealth, drove around in a bulletproof Cadillac
He felt that there was nothing wrong with providing a service that consenting adults wanted.

11. St. Valentine’s day massacre
Capone orders the brutal murder of 6 members of a rival Chicago gang. He evades prosecution.
Would have been much easier to charge Capone if the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) existed back then.
Allows mob bosses to be charged for the crimes of their subordinates, enacted in 1970.

12. The massacre

13. The criminal enterprise
Mobsters made their fortunes not simply through alcohol but also through controlling gambling, prostitution, and racketeering rings.
They paid off cops and forced local businesses to pay “protection” fees.
What are some of the advances in transportation and weaponry that helped mobsters do their jobs more efficiently?

14. The automobile and the tommy gun

15. The FBI
The federal government fought back with improved law enforcement.
Headed by J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI went after mobsters like Capone, who managed to evade chargers brought against him
Feds finally get Capone on tax evasion

16. Movies/Series related to the Prohibition Era

17. Closure
Prohibition and Organized Crime were just two factors that made the twenties a time of boom, excitement, and ultimately. . . Tragedy.
The intense pace at which life in the twenties moved came to an equally abrupt end in 1929 with the stock market crash and the ensuing Great Depression.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt repealed prohibition, to the rejoice of millions.