By Larry Felton Johnson

Unless you were an organized crime figure, the attempt at imposing prohibition on a national scale in the early 20th century was a dismal failure. If you were an organized crime figure, it brought fabulous riches (or maybe an early, violent death, depending on how successful you were).

But despite the failure of that social experiment, the movement to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages at every level of government remained strong through the 19th and mid-20th centuries.

While digging through the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, I ran across this short article from the July 6, 1907 issue of the Atlanta Georgian.

ONLY TWO REFUSE TO SIGN PETITION

Special to The Georgian
Acworth, Ga., July 6 — Through the diligent work of the Anti-Saloon League, under the presidency of Rev. C. Crawley and H. B. Bearlight, and A. J. Morgan, vice president, a petition endorsing state prohibition has been circulated in Acworth and the surrounding community. Only two men refused to sign the petition.

The city council, in session last night, passed resolutions endorsing the Hardman-Covington bill and expressing a desire that the senator and representatives from Cobb County give their earnest support to the passage of the state prohibition bill now pending in the legislature.

Sentiment for statewide prohibition is practically unanimous in this section of Cobb County.

Was this effort successful?

The Acworth Anti-Saloon League was part of a strong national and Georgia prohibition movement that lasted from the 1820s through the mid-1930s. The league was a national organization with chapters throughout Georgia. It exerted strong political influence, at least until it lost momentum in the 1930s.

According to this article from the New Georgia Encyclopedia, prohibition in Georgia lasted from 1907 to 1935, when the Georgia legislature repealed the prohibition law.

About Georgia Historic Newspapers

Georgia Historic Newspapers is a part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia. It’s an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in the history of Georgia and its regions.

According to the “About” page on its website:

The Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. Since 2007, the DLG has partnered with universities, archives, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions to digitize historical newspapers from around the state. The archive is free and open for public use and includes over two million Georgia newspaper pages between 1763 and 2021.

Newspaper titles are regularly digitized and added to the archive. If you are interested in including a particular title, you can visit our participation page. A majority of the newspapers on this site were digitized from the microfilm produced by the Georgia Newspaper Project (GNP). For more information about the microfilm available through the GNP, please visit their website.