The era is often called the “Roaring Twenties,” and stirs up images of flappers, gangsters, and cocktail parties.  Drinking, however, was illegal nationwide, thanks to the Eighteenth Amendment, which went into effect on January 16, 1920, and Congress subsequently repealed over a decade later on December 5, 1933.

Washington, D.C., is a unique city in that it remained completely under federal control until 1974 when Washington was able to elect its own mayor.  In the twentieth century, Washington became an experimental arena for national prohibition.  The local prohibition law, the Sheppard Act, went into effect November 1, 1917 and was repealed March 1, 1934, several months after the national law was repealed.   However, Washington was not the first area to enact a local prohibition law.  Prohibition legislation was enacted across the United States during the nineteenth century, most notably in Maine in 1851.[2]

While it does not compare to turbulent cities like New York and Chicago during this period, Washington, D.C., did have problems with prohibition violations and enforcement.  It became known as a hypocritical city where the legislators did not vote as the constituents wished and where they did not always comply with the law.  Many temperance groups across the nation looked to Washington, D.C., as a model city for prohibition to succeed because of its proximity to prominent political figures.  The fate of the nation and this "experiment" in  prohibition rest in their hands.

This page was last updated 14 December 2003
Created by Elizabeth Hogan