Halloween in 1916 in Richmond was frightening beyond just the “hundreds of kiddies and light-hearted grown-ups” who “threw cares to the wind and celebrated Hallowe’en in the grand old style” in neighborhoods across the city, according to The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
On the same night, dueling events brought thousands of people downtown. As a result of a successful 1914 referendum and passage of the Virginia Prohibition Act of 1915, bars, breweries and distilleries were ordered to cease the sale of alcohol at the stroke of midnight on Halloween night 1916. Virginia would turn “dry” three years before the 18th Amendment to the Constitution ushered in nationwide Prohibition. Virginians would be limited to the purchase of only a single quart of alcohol per month for religious and medicinal uses.
“With the pomp and circumstance befitting the passing of a reign that held sway in Virginia since the days when it was a colony under Elizabeth, Richmond turned out last night to celebrate the going of King John Barleycorn and to raise to power in his place the pale Prince Quart-a-Month,” the Times-Dispatch reported on the morning of Nov. 1, 1916.
An estimated 20,000 revelers partied up and down the Broad Street retail and theater district, draining the diminishing stock of liquor in restaurants, bars and clubs. By 10:00 PM, the newspaper reported, many bars had run dry and closed their doors early.
At the stroke of midnight on Nov. 1, 1916, the Virginia Prohibition Act took effect, banning the sale of alcohol. [Credit: Nov. 1, 1916, Richmond Times-Dispatch, pA1]
At the same time, thousands of temperance advocates crowded into downtown Richmond churches as bells rang-out at midnight to herald the arrival of Prohibition. To advocates, Prohibition was a hard-fought moral and political victory in support of stable families and productive workers. One prominent Virginia editorialist, writing in support of Prohibition, had opined that rampant alcohol abuse was responsible "for pauperism and insanity and crime and shame and misery and broken hearts and ruined homes and shortened, wasted lives.”
But a robust underground economy quickly developed to serve a thirsty public. It linked notorious moonshiners in mountainous rural Virginia with customers in more populated regions like Richmond and Norfolk. They were serviced by a thriving network of bootleggers who transported illegal liquor in fast cars and modified trucks. A popular legend tells us that NASCAR racing was born in the South and was built by daring drivers who learned to outrace and outmaneuver Prohibition's enforcers.
Spectators gather by the side of a captured rumrunner at the downtown Norfolk waterfront in 1922 and watch Prohibition agents pour 'white lightning' from five-gallon jugs into the Elizabeth River.
(Source: (AP Photo/ Virginian-Pilot, Collection of Carroll Walker)
Prohibition also created its own unique and colorful underground culture. People used specific words, phrases and secret knocks to access password-protected ‘nip joints’ and speakeasies where alcohol and other adult entertainments could be enjoyed. Hidden compartments in everyday items, including clothing, allowed people to move illegal alcohol from place to place. During Prohibition, the humorist Will Rogers would later joke, tailors would ask their customers what size pockets they wanted -- "pint or quart?"
A moonshiner is handcuffed to a tree during a bust of an illegal still in Henrico County sometime in the 1930s. [Virginia Chamber of Commerce Photographic Collection]
“Just as would be seen later with nationwide prohibition, Virginia struggled to enforce its ban on alcohol,” Library of Virginia archivist Claire Radcliffe wrote 100 years later. “Virginia shared the Chesapeake Bay with Maryland, which not only failed to introduce an early statewide prohibition but refused to enforce the 18th Amendment after it was passed in 1920; between that and the wide expanse of coastline, Virginia had too many routes for smuggling.”
By 1933, it was clear in Virginia and across much of the nation that Prohibition was a colossal failure. It proved to be both unpopular and unworkable. Virginia voters overwhelmingly elected to overturn the prohibition on alcohol 17 years after it was enacted, but not before it had helped to create a generation of gangsters and hoodlums.
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