Gettin' there!
First, I'm not sure I ever mentioned what I'm doing my thesis on. (Maybe way back when....) It's a study of racial rhetoric that was used by temperance agitators in Jim Crow Alabama, between 1890 and 1920. That was the original focus, anyway. Now my time frame is a teensy bit narrower, on accounta the rhetoric didn't start until 1906 and Alabama went bone dry in July 1915.
How on earth would you select such a topic, anyway? you ask. Well see...It began with a lifelong fascination with weird laws pertaining to alcohol sales and consumption. I grew up in Nacogdoches, Texas, which was a wet county adjacent to a dry one (Lufkin). We'd pass a string of brightly lit err, merchants on our way to Lufkin, just this side of the county line. Daddy called them "Koolaid stands." They were there, of course, for the shameless purpose of providing alcohol to customers just over the border. I never understood why people would bother to make such a thing illegal within a specific area when they knew someone just over the line was providing all their residents wanted. Basically, they were simply rejecting revenue. So they made it illegal so people had to drive a little further. No biggie. Even I, as a child, could do the simple math: anyone who wanted it had but to buy more and stock up.
When I got older and was waiting tables, I learned that the city of Nacogdoches had a strange law that required anyone having an alcoholic drink with his meal to purchase a year's membership from that restaurant. The membership was only two or three bucks, but it was a silly rule. If you ate out much and liked a beer with your pasta, you'd have a wallet full of these things. I never figured out the reason for that one, other than it being a simple way to bilk a bit more revenue out of alcohol drinkers (an additional "sin tax," if you will, but if you have any clue how much the government makes off alcohol already, you'd have kittens), and maybe so people had lists of people who'd bought alcohol. Maybe they thought it cut down on underage drinking (it didn't; we just bought booze at the liquor store). As far as I know, this law is still in effect, too.
In Wilmington, North Carolina, where I went to college, we have ABCs. I believe that stands for Alcoholic Beverage Control (but we called them "Aunt Betty's Closet"). That's where you had to go if you wished to buy anything harder than beer or wine. They were designed to be cold and uninviting, I hear, and generally make you feel like a criminal. I never went to one. I don't care for the hard stuff.
In Augusta, Georgia, I recall purchasing a six pack of Killian's Red bottles and the clerk put it in a bag. I said that wasn't necessary, because it comes with a handle already. She said it's the law. Now. The bag--plastic, thin--was practically see-through. What on earth was the point? To protect the children, I assume. Later, when I had occasion to buy a 12-pack, no bag was offered. The lesson was that children were to be protected from small offensive packages, but you can leave a store carrying a veritable billboard and the children just had to suck it up.
California didn't have any goofy laws like that that I remember. Then I moved to Alabama. The first week in town, I went to the Outhouse Steakback and ordered a small prime rib with a 22oz Killians in a frosty glass mmmmmmmmm. The exchange went something like this:
Waitress: I'm sorry ma'am, but we don't have draft beer. It's against the law here. Can I get you a bottle?
Me: Hahahahahaha. Good one. No, I'll, uh, go with the 22oz draft, please.
Waitress: I'm sorry ma'am, but there are no draft beer sales in Montgomery county. Can I get you a bottle?
Me: You're for real?!
I'd seen some kooky laws, me, but I'd never heard of one as seemingly pointless as this one. The next year, Montgomery decided to lift its draft beer ban. I'm not sure why. Probably because, oh, IT WAS AN IGNORANT LAW. But anyway, my fascination with the subject reawakened.
I thought I'd do my thesis on the origin of Alabama's crazy alcohol laws, which would have been fun. However, I couldn't narrow the topic properly to produce a prospectus. By this time, I'd sunk weeks into studying the history of the temperance movement, so it seemed reasonable to find some other area of the subject to explore. Temperance history, however, is just so done.
It's what Dr. K calls "a sexy subject." It's fun, it's full of exaggeration and fanatics. It blossomed into a huge national movement and turned out to be a huge mistake because, um, you just can't legislate people into heaven. Historians have attacked it from almost every conceivable angle, and the point of a thesis is to contribute to the body of scholarly work on a subject in some meaningful way.
In an excellent book by James Morone called "Hellfire Nation," I stumbled across a comment about the racial rhetoric some agitators employed. I'd never known their maneuvering used outright bigotry, but then, it makes perfect sense considering the social climate of the times. Thus, I decided to do my thesis on the racial rhetoric used in Alabama by temperance agitators, specifically vilifying blacks who had no way to fight back.
The reading is melodramatic and somewhat lurid. It's a sexy subject, and an angle that has not been done.
So, I'm racing the clock on this. I completed my historiography in January, but for a couple of tweaks as recommended by my adviser, Dr. K. The historiography is a review of all pertinent work that has been done on my topic, which is precious little, in my case.
Then I finally turned in my "background" section a couple of weeks ago. The background is anything necessary to provide context for my study. In this case, Dr. K told me to give a history of slave codes and black codes pertaining to alcohol and the reasons for them; the political atmosphere of Alabama at the time; and the history of temperance agitation in Alabama for the period in question, and attitudes toward alcohol. I added a fourth section covering some of the arguments for white superiority that were common at the time.
Dr. K reviewed my overwrought background and edited it half to death, and sent it back with a note that said, "Obviously this was a very rough draft...." How embarrassing. I thought it was better than that, really. When I started reading his editing, I cringed in horror. Heavens...he was right.
The funny thing is, a few days later, I looked at his edits (which were a vast improvement on what I'd given him), and found them disjointed and horribly all over the place still. I fixed them, now having it cut down to a manageable size and knowing what I wanted to say, but...no wonder Dr. K was incensed about what I'd turned in to him. How embarrassing.
Now I'm ready to get cracking on the main body of my thesis now. Should have the drafts done by the end of next weekend.
Oh, incidentally...in the course of my background work, I've figured out the source of most of the kooky alcohol laws I've encountered over the years. They had their root in temperance extremist rhetoric.
d
