Reviewed by: Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South by Brendan J. J. Payne Ian E. Van Dyke (bio) Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South. By Brendan J. J. Payne. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022. Pp. xiii, 273. $45.00 cloth; $11.05 ebook) The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century struggle over alcohol in the U.S. has been the subject of innumerable studies. Brendan J. J. Payne adds an important contribution with the lucidly written Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow, a timely study examining both the racialized and religious dynamics of prohibition in the American South between the 1880s and the New Deal era. Highlighting overlooked voices in the historical record, Payne rethinks longstanding narratives of prohibition in the states of the former Confederacy. Payne sheds new light on the understudied world of anti-prohibitionist Christian "wets" across the South, paying close attention to the ways political alliance-building alternatively undermined and reinforced the region's contested hierarchies of race, religion, and gender. Payne begins with an exposition of the religious politics of alcohol in the pre-prohibition South. Black and white Christians alike, Payne notes, were generally guided by cultural practices and traditionalist Protestant theology that held moderate alcohol consumption acceptable. Swimming against this cultural tide were early "drys," who not [End Page 86] only worked (tentatively) across the color line, but also transgressed traditional gender roles and even appealed to ecumenical sensibilities to advocate for restrictions on the sale of intoxicating liquor in the 1880s. While early "dry" campaigners sought to outlaw alcohol through broad-based support, "drys" increasingly came to identify African Americans as an impediment to their agenda and worked systematically to dismantle non-white voting rights throughout the 1910s. In response, Black voters of various religious denominations pursued unlikely alliances with white brewers, distillers, and an ecumenical coalition of white "wets." Citing longstanding conceptions of "Christian liberty" (and even comparing the "dry" campaigners' religious rhetoric to "Islamic legalism," in a nod to Muslims' abstinence from alcohol), "wets" pushed back to forestall the implementation of policies aimed squarely at Black disenfranchisement (p. 123). In several southern states, they succeeded, at least temporarily. Despite some early victories, Payne notes that interracial and ecumenical opposition to prohibition eventually faltered. The Jim Crow regime of the post-Confederate South took its place alongside a "Gin Crow" system that elevated anti-Catholicism alongside anti-Black racism and increasingly relied on the support of newly enfranchised white women. White women, however, eventually proved key to Gin Crow's undoing. Payne argues that "political preaching" against demon rum, which reached a fever pitch in the first two decades of the twentieth century, dried up as a new generation of southern leaders, and particularly women, abandoned moral crusading for more pragmatic governance—albeit still firmly rooted in Jim Crow white supremacy. Payne shows, in other words, how Gin Crow gave way to Jim Crow once prohibition destroyed Black voting power in the South. Payne admits that "this book's main contribution … is not so much uncovering new sources as viewing widely available evidence through the twin lenses of religion and race" (pp. 3–4). Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow at times rehashes well-known developments and thoroughly studied aspects of prohibition, though always in service of providing [End Page 87] context to the larger story. As Payne illustrates, that story is far more complicated than traditional narratives of prohibition—whether of white evangelical unanimity, or African American political quiescence—might suggest. And to his credit, Payne's clear prose ensures the argument is never lost, even amid its complexity. Historians of politics, religion, race, and gender, both in the South and beyond, will find much to consider in Payne's recounting of America's greatest culture war. In this case, as Payne demonstrates, new wine can indeed be found in old wineskins. Ian E. Van Dyke IAN E. VAN DYKE is a visiting professor of history at Grand Valley State University. He is currently at work on a book manuscript on American evangelicals, radical politics, and global Christian...
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Mar 17, 2023
Luke Rodewald 
Open Access