Prohibition Remembrance Day in USA

The Prohibition Amendment had profound consequences: it made brewing and distilling illegal, expanded state and federal government, inspired new forms of sociability between men and women, and suppressed elements of immigrant and working-class culture.

The Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the production, transportation, and sale of alcohol. On January 16, 1919, it was ratified by the requisite number of states, but did not go into effect for another year. Prohibition Remembrance Day commemorates the ratification and implementation of Prohibition, and the almost fourteen years that American citizens lived under it.

The increase of the illegal production and sale of liquor (known as “bootlegging”), the proliferation of speakeasies (illegal drinking spots) and the accompanying rise in gang violence and organized crime led to waning support for Prohibition by the end of the 1920s.