A Santori Aurora Public Library program looked back in time August 25, with a presentation on prohibition in Aurora.
Ethan Mikolay, staff librarian, chronicled “Aurora’s Temperance Movement,” recounting local initiatives from their earliest days in 1837 through the end of prohibition in 1933. Visitors gathered before 7 p.m. in a library community room for the 25-minute program.
Featured were vintage newspaper clippings, photographs, an 1874 Currier and Ives anti-alcohol lithograph, recorded music and free, non-alcoholic “prohibition punch.”
Prohibition in U.S. history was the nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933, when it was repealed. The movement was led by groups like the Anti-Saloon League and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), who viewed alcohol as the root of societal ills like poverty and domestic abuse.
Mikolay said Aurora’s first temperance initiative was the Washington Movement which began in 1837. With the motto “Liberty, equality, and fraternity,” Washingtonians sought to reform individual alcoholics by promoting moderation. The Aurora chapter closed after a few years.
In November 1848, the first Sons of Temperance chapter was founded at First Methodist Episcopal Church. The chapter’s theme was “love, purity and fidelity.” The chapter inspired a crackdown on 42 saloons in Aurora.
After East and West Aurora united in 1857, the first liquor laws were passed. Licenses were $75. Three temperance newspapers were created. They were “The Reformer,” “The Temperance Tocsin” and “The Temperance Monitor.”
The Aurora Ladies’ Temperance Union, founded in 1874, joined the WCTU in 1882. In March 1892, a “Grandmothers’ Rally” was held to benefit the Aurora WCTU chapter. A booklet featured biographies of 48 present or past WCTU members who settled in Aurora from other areas or states.
The Aurora Daily News reported that hundreds attended the rally. Spectators were charged admission and each grandmother brought an item to sell to raise additional funds. Copies of the souvenir booklet were advertised for sale in local papers. Six original booklets are held by the Aurora Historical Society.
—Al Benson