With five days to explore Savannah this time around, we made a point to spend a day or two looking closely at some of the attractions we'd notice previously, but had simply walked past.
The Prohibition Museum impressively more spacious than it appears from the outside. It is packed with historical fodder. The most informative stuff is the plethora of newspaper clippings framed in wall hangings -- headlines screaming the pros and cons of the enactment of the 18th Amendment -- the U.S. government's decision to ban the manufacture, sale and distribution (but not the consumption) of alcoholic beverages.
The ban, which took effect in 1919, was a buckle to a strong religious lobby -- led by the Women's Christian Temperance Union -- which argued that alcoholic beverages had become the bane of existence to American families. The organization claimed that too many men were spending inordinately large percentages of a household's income on their addiction to spirits, impoverishing families in the process.
While there is plenty of historical artifacts commemorating the emotional reaction to the start of Prohibition in 1919, there is a good amount, too, celebrating its repeal with -- passage of the 21st Amendment -- in 1933. (I've always wondered whether a large percentage of Americans understood the "why" behind the name of the 21st Amendment franchise liquor stores.)
There is a lot of materials devoted to how organized crime exploited the "dry" spell to rake in millions trafficking in illegal production, sales and distribution of booze ... and the secretive consumption of spirits in establishments known as speakeasys.
There is a point in the museum, too, where visitors can get pictures taken of themselves holding Tommy guns standing against a wall next to life-size re-creations of Prohibition gangsters Al Capone, Bugs Morgan and Machine Jack McGurn. That's what you see in the photo leading off the post. These re-creations are of high quality; I took closeups of Moran and Capone and dropped them into the text here.
Many years ago, probably when I was in grade school, I recall the subject of Prohibition coming up at home, probably while we were watching an old movie classic on television. My father, who did not turn 21 until November 1931 -- two years before the repeal -- tried to explain to us kids what it was about. I don't remember having the presence of mind to do the math and figure he would have been old enough to sneak drinks in those two years before repeal, much less ask him about it. I sure would like to do that today. My mother was almost a full eight years younger than Dad, so she wouldn't even have been a teenager when the repeal came along.The subject has always intrigued me, although today, in the 21st century, I rarely think about it ... unless something like a Prohibition Museum presents itself.
The museum charges $12 for admission; for another $5, you have the option to buy a ticket for a modest cocktail in the museum's "speakeasy" near the end of your visit.
To view a larger and sharper version of any image here, just click on the photo. To see a full gallery of images from my visit to the museum, click on the link in this sentence.
Photo geek stuff: All images were taken with my iPhone X, with minimum editing done post-processing (mostly to cull detail in heavily shadowed areas).
Next up: Telfair Academy, Savannah
Previous posts in this series:
Savannah at night
Savannah in daylight
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