Nominate Your Poison: Black conservative discourse on Prohibition in The New York Age

Abstract

This thesis explores black conservative views toward Prohibition in Harlem through an analysis of The New York Age. In doing so it aims to show that black conservative responses to Prohibition were driven by their espousal of uplift ideology. It seeks to call into question attempts by earlier historians to accommodation black conservatism into the history of Prohibition as cultural battleground between two views of society – one conservative and in favour of Prohibition and the other more liberal and opposed to it.