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Virginia Vignettes
amendment to the state constitution. In the face of these disappointments, many Virginia women joined the militant National Woman’s Party that was more aggressive in pressing for a federal amendment, which finally passed Congress in 1919. Although the 1920 assembly rejected the nineteenth amendment (Virginia’s legislators did not approve the amendment until 1952), ratification at the national level allowed Virginia women to vote for the first time in 1920. Did Virginians obey the prohibition laws?
Although it had high hopes of burying “demon rum,” the Virginia Prohibition Commission found the task of enforcing the law overwhelming. Smuggling networks infiltrated from the Midwest into the Shenandoah Valley, from Maryland down the Eastern Shore, and at any convenient Chesapeake Bay landing site. Furthermore, local moon shining became a popular and lucrative enterprise, notahly in the southern Virginia Blue Ridge where mountain stills satisfied the thirsts of mill towns and urban centers of the mid-Atlantic region. Typical was a Norfolk citizen, who, with a recipe from a relative, copper kettles and piping, pint jars, and a small stove, operated a wholesale business over her apartment. Despite the zealous efforts of the insufficiently funded commission, citizens of the commonwealth continued to enjoy their boot-, leg whiskey or bathtub gin. Although 3,183 of them were arrested in 1928 for violating the drinking laws and 35,655 gallons of liquor were confiscated, juries often would not convict offenders; and local officials, sometimes the recipients of bribes, gave little support to the prohibition agents.
78.7%