The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South (Making the Modern South) by Brendan J. J. Payne

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow: Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South (Making the Modern South) by Brendan J. J. Payne In Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow, Brendan J. J. Payne reveals how prohibition helped realign the racial and religious order in the South by linking restrictions on alcohol with political preaching and the disfranchisement of Black voters. While both sides invoked Christianity, prohibitionists redefined churches’ doctrines, practices, and political engagement. White prohibitionists initially courted Black voters in the 1880s but soon dismissed them as hopelessly wet and sought to disfranchise them, stoking fears of drunken Black men defiling white women in their efforts to reframe alcohol restriction as a means of racial control. Later, as the alcohol industry grew desperate, it turned to Black voters, many of whom joined the brewers to preserve their voting rights and maintain personal liberties. Tracking southern debates about alcohol from the 1880s through the 1930s, Payne shows that prohibition only retreated from the region once the racial and religious order it helped enshrine had been secured.

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Chris Voss, the Video Game Education Podcast. That'll be coming up next. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that

I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Thanks for tuning in. Today we've got an amazing author on the show. He's the amazing of the new book that just came out April 20, 2022. I love all the twos in there. He is the author of Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow, Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South,

Making the Modern South. Brendan J.J. Payne is on the show with us today. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing research that went into this book and everything behind it. He is the son of Evangelical Missionaries to Japan. He earned a BA in History from Wheaton College in 2008 and MDiv from Gordon Cornell in 2022, or I'm sorry, 2020, 2012. what's going on with me today i i think these twos are getting to me i'm being overwhelmed by the twos and a phd in history from baylor university in 2017 since 2018 he's fought he's fought he's fought and taught full-time at north greenfield university a southern baptist school in south car, where he has been a history department chair since 2020. Along with his wife, Catherine, he loves hiking in South Carolina

upstate, particularly Paris Mountain State Park, and they also enjoy board games during the pandemic, it says here. Reading, hosting a small group of local evangelical church people, and also pina coladas while be on the beach. Welcome to the show. How are you, my friend, Brendan? Doing well, thank you. How are you doing, Chris? There you go. I had to throw the pina colada in there thing because it was either that or else the partridge in a pear tree for all those

things you're doing with you and your family. Give us your .com so people can find you on the interwebs. Well, my.com is under construction. During the pandemic, things fell by the wayside. So I'm hoping to get my.com up and running shortly, but right now it's under construction. So do not enter. Do not pass go.

All right. You're on Twitter. I know that at the very least. Can people find you over there? Yeah. So BJJ Payne, P-A-Y-N-E, is the handle. And you can order his books wherever fine books are sold. Remember to go in the fine bookstores, not those

alleyway bookstores. You need a tetanus shot if you're going to them. So what motivated you to want to write this book, Brendan? Sure. I was inspired to search the topic by when I was at Gordon-Conwell. I was getting my master's in divinity. I was thinking about maybe going into the ministry at that point, but one thing led to another. And one

of my professors, Garth Rizal, said, you should really think about looking more into prohibition and religion. So I said, OK. And that led me then to pursue a PhD from Baylor University. And as I was studying there, I realized it's not just about the spectrum of religious views on prohibition that's so interesting. It's also the role of race in the prohibition question. It's so important. And the primary sources time and again reveal the importance of race. So that's basically the crux of the whole book. I'm looking at views on prohibition religiously and also in terms of race in the U.S. South. Now, when you say prohibition, is that in the alcohol era prohibition? Yeah. So I just say prohibition throughout the book. I mean, alcohol era prohibition? Yeah. Yeah. So I just see a prohibition throughout the book.

I mean, specifically the prohibition of alcoholic beverages, the production, transportation, distribution of alcoholic beverages. So normally people think of the consumption of alcoholic beverages, but prohibition was more focused on the what they call the alcohol lobby or the alcohol industry, which is more about how you produce it and move it and sell it. That's what they're targeting mostly. So some states never actually banned the drinking of alcohol, just the commerce side of it, because they were concerned about saloons. They were concerned about the culture around alcohol, which led, of course, to very real abuse and abandonment and health issues, of course. And so that's a lot of the focus is on how we're getting the alcohol in people's hands and let's target that and so how did that mix with jinn jesus and jim crow and religious and racial politics in the south yeah so that's a big story for more details read the book but essentially the argument is being made all right well thanks for coming by everyone

sure so the elevator speech version of that is first there's a shift from the 1880s when prohibition had not really been a seriously considered thing in the South until after the Civil War. And then Southern evangelical preachers are particularly interested in how can we, you know, boost our influence in society? How can we kind of bring more order? And they were showing more alignment with some Northern and Western reformers. Whereas before the Civil War, they were very wary of any sort of abolitionism or anything like that which is very northern idea and so in the 80s you have this southern baptist southern methodist really taking on the issue of prohibition as they've changed their own religious views again christian tradition has been affirming moderate alcohol use since forever i mean since going back to like the seder meal with that the

last supper based on right so holy wine is an ancient idea that Christians used to endorse. And basically the argument I make is, religiously speaking, prohibition changed religious practices, religious teachings, and religious involvement in politics. And that becomes this determinative shift from politics and political preaching is not okay in a religious sense to not only is it okay, but it's recommended in the South. And that happens from the 1880s to the 20s. Wow. And then you also have on the racial side of things. In the 1880s, there's attempts at interracial cooperation on prohibition. But as those efforts fail throughout the South, white prohibitionists tend to lean more towards, we're just going to get rid of all the voters that disagree with us, poor whites, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans,

and embracing Jim Crow, not so much the segregation side of Jim Crow, but the political disfranchisement side of Jim Crow. That becomes increasingly associated with prohibition, and African-Americans increasingly are siding even with openly with brewers and distillers to get out their votes because because of Jim Crow, they're losing the vote. So you have this movement of African-Americans being more anti-prohibitionists in order to preserve their civil liberties and white prohibitionists becoming increasingly more blatantly white supremacists in their rhetoric all the way till the 1930s. Yeah. So there's these two shifts over time. Religious politics changes, racial politics changes and prohibitions right there in the middle of all of it. Was there any were they lobbying for prohibition or is this just an adaptation of when the laws got enacted? Yeah, that's a great question. And so I argue that you look at a lot of these leading white prohibitionists and they are themselves changing their attitudes over time like they i mean the white supremacism is something that most white

people north southwest whatever in the u.s at that time thought but the close connection between jim crow is enacted in the 1890s early 1900s and that is when prohibition becomes the most critical issue in the south from you know the early 1900s and 1910s. And the last gasp of African-American voting, mass voting in the South, is actually during Jim Crow against prohibition. So you have African-Americans literally fighting, sometimes at the same time, voting against both prohibition bills and, you know, Jim Crow bills. In 1910, 1911, 1912, African-Americans casting decisive votes because the white votes are now divided. And African-Americans, because of their alliance with brewers, are able to pay for poll taxes or get organized to pay poll taxes. So I basically argue that Jim Crow was pushed part by white supremacists, partly to push prohibition.

And secondly, the last last gasp of mass black voting in the U.S. South under Jim Crow in the 1910s was against prohibition and secondly the last last gasp of mass black voting in the u.s south under jim crow in 19 teens was against prohibition so in other words as long as prohibition wasn't in place there was some hope for some real political participation for african americans in the south because of this large white industry supporting them once alcohol gets banned in the south once prohibition is in place on the statewide and then the federal level in the 1910s and 1920s, then African-Americans are no longer playing a major role in politics until you get to the civil rights movement in the 50s and 60s. So that's the argument politically for African-Americans. Was it like a targeting of like what Nixon did with the drug war, which was, you know, I mean, I think it's Ehrlichman who's admitted that they did it as a racial war thing.

Oh, yeah. To attack. So was that what they were trying to do with prohibition? I would say it's about racial control. nils and teens is and even into the 20s they use this like you're just well you see the reason we have this lynching problem is because you know the old threadbare lie as idb wells calls it the idea that african-american men are going to do something to white women and so the concern is if you don't give these folks alcohol they won't do bad things and therefore it's a matter of social control but i would say specifically in the south of racial control because it's coded that way

in other words not only are you know people in general using alcohol and that's causing problems but even you see the rhetoric from whether they're progressive or more conservative whites in the south that embrace prohibition like this guy richmond pearson hobson alabama big progressive guy like for women's voting rights and all these sorts of things labor laws he also basically in his rhetoric, I say over time, accelerates this trend from alcohol hurts everyone. Everyone is transformed by alcohol to specifically targeting Native Americans

and African Americans as people particularly prone to violence and danger if alcohol is not banned. So there's this idea of racial control, even among the more progressive voices in the U.S. South. But also, you know, leading Methodist clergy, other politicians, this language of racial control is, in other words, we need this in order to protect African-Americans from themselves sort of trajectory where the rhetoric of white supremacism twins with, dovetails with prohibition rhetoric and this idea of suppressing African-Americans and in Texas, also Mexican-Americans and uplifting white women, both in terms of protecting white women, but also giving white women the vote. There's kind of this exchange going on.

Black men losing power, losing prestige. White women gaining power, gaining prestige. And then we go particularly pronounced in the 1930s where women now have a vote. They're particularly involved in discussions about prohibition and repeal. And white women are casting decisive votes now. But African-Americans, their votes have been taken away because there's no longer a major white industry that's supporting their right to vote anymore. So, yeah, it's kind of a parallel about race and gender all coming at the same time. Holy crap.

Yeah. Man, the things we learn about history. I love what I do because we've had so many historians on, like yourself, that work for esteemed institutions and have done their research on this. And it's amazing how much of our history is whitewashed. You know, the stuff that I was never taught. But, you know, you look at it and you go, well, that makes sense. That's, wow.

You know, it's just, oh, man, it's depressing sometimes to think about. It is. Yeah, this makes sense. I never even thought about the women's vote being a way to wash out black voting. Oh, it was in the 19-teens. It's very, especially when you have close statewide votes. So, you know, Texas 1910, Arkansas 1912, Florida, so Florida 1910, Texas 1911, Arkansas 1912, these three states. Specifically in Texas, you have a lot of rhetoric before the election, and it's a closed election,

prohibition fails at the statewide level. You still have local, like, towns and counties that have prohibition, but the state as a whole, not going dry. And immediately after that, you have these dry newspapers saying, from white women, saying, I never used to support women's suffrage, but we need women to vote because we got to wash out. Why is it that these, and I'm not going to repeat the racial epithets, but basically, but this language against Mexicans and African-Americans. They're supposed to be saying, why is it the white women who are educated? There's an educated argument. Why is it they can't vote and these folks can? And so it's explicitly making this argument of Jim Crow logic, right?

Isn't Jim Crow is supposed to not only socially separate, but also is supposed to kind of get rid of votes of people that shouldn't vote, quote unquote. And so the argument for white women voting, and this is true in the North and the South and West, is that, well, if you're an educated white woman, they should get to vote. And all these folks that are seen as less desirable voters by, you know, middle class, white, progressive or not progressive voters, they want to kind of purify the ballot. And so that argument is made explicitly in the 20s and 30s. And then, of course, when women changed their minds about prohibition, women were assumed to always vote dry. And then we get to the 1930s, women have other priorities. Women are now split on this issue. And if they feel safe enough to get rid of prohibition, then you can still continue Jim Crow and racial control. But prohibition isn't

necessary to continue that anymore. And that's one of the reasons I argue that prohibition was repealed, is because in the South, it was largely about racial control. Not entirely, there's other issues too. But it's a major factor, and basically, Jim Crow, that is prohibition in the South, is part of Jim Crow, but it's disposed of before Jim Crow is. Because it's really seen as something that helps achieve racial control.

And then once it's no longer necessary, once white women are now politically empowered and no longer feel that that's necessary to protect them, it's okay to get rid of it. So Prohibition ran between January 17th, 1920, December 5th, 1933. When did women get the right to vote? Late in 1920, the 5th, 1933. When did women get the right to vote? Late in 1920, the same year. And the 19th Amendment was pushed for by groups like the Anti-Sal And it's interesting to note that the 19th Amendment was really controversial, much more so than the 18th Amendment politically. And it only pushed through because of a handful of Southern states, including Arkansas, Texas, and then the decisive 10 in late 1920. So yeah, so the women's right to vote was

perceived at the time as women purifying politics particularly as a way to safeguard prohibition which has already been voted in nationally but to make sure that at every state you know at every level that prohibition was going to continue because again half the voting pool votes dry it's pretty well impossible to repeal yeah and the extraordinary lengths of this country and like i say out of all the historians've found on the show and books they've written, the extraordinary lengths of this country that they will do to act and to be, you know, the 450 years of the racist history of this country is just astounding. And the levels that they will go to, even of self-harm and destroying this country, destroying the economic industries of this country.

You know, John Alvon wrote in his book on Abraham Lincoln recently, you know, Lincoln had a huge vision for freeing the slaves in an economic driver of them suddenly going out and starting businesses and getting jobs, and he saw the power of this economy that would explode and, you know, make the country great. And, of course, with his death, we ended up with Jim Crow and just almost everything he wanted unwound. But yeah, it's extraordinary some of this stuff that goes on. Let's talk about what was the enforcement

of the 20s and how did that play out along racial lines? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I want to first reference another historian's great work, because you just mentioned one. Lisa Gerr wrote this fantastic book called War on Alcohol, which explicitly connects what you were mentioning earlier, which is, you know, what's the connection between this and like the drug wars of the 80s to today? And she calls it the war on alcohol because, you know, it's the first drug war in U.S. history on a federal level and also state and local level at that extent. And yeah, that's one of the drivers of mass incarceration is in prohibition enforcement in the 20s.

Of course, we had other things earlier, but prohibition makes it really a national thing. And shocker, there's disproportionate enforcement on racial lines. So African-Americans are targeted disproportionately. When African-Americans are targeted by law enforcement, they're more likely that it's law enforcement to reach for the gun and shoot people, more likely to arrest, more likely to convict, you still have this precedent of drug laws being disproportionately enforced in certain neighborhoods. And that gets picked up and expanded in the late 20th century. But the precedent of kind of mass incarceration for drug offenses starts with the prohibition.

And you bet that's going to be disproportionately enforced against African-Americans, as in fact was the case. Wow. Man, geez, the work that they go through, you know, you had the Nixon thing where they targeted with the war on drugs and that continued for so many years. You had the Reagan years where they took away the social programs, increased police and prisons. And of course, what, you know, what happened then? We've had a couple of authors who wrote some books about their family experiences in the Reagan years. And, you know, they basically funded drug addiction and helped, you know, they took away social programs that were supporting people that, you know, rehab and different things like that.

Basically increased police presence. And, of course, what do you do when you do that? The police got to have somebody to arrest. So they go find stuff to do and people end up on the streets with drugs and alcohol and everything else and then the jails fill and and then it's kind of interesting how many people fill the jails and how disproportionate that is it's insane what this country does with race just insane how insidious and interwoven into the fabric of our society and then to see the CRT battles going on right now, where, oh God, no one should ever, you know, uncover what we've been up to all these years.

So thank God for people like you who write books and this stuff. What are some other things we want to tease out or aspects that encourage people to go buy the book and check it out? Well, yeah, there's a lot going on in the book. And I really think what's another interesting part, going back to the religion part of it, is I think a lot of times there's this perception that when it comes to religion and politics, it tends to play on one side of the aisle. I think that's been something that's played out over the last few decades, especially with the rise of the religious right in the late 70s. And there's some great books by many historians on why that happened. And my intention of the book is basically, let's back up before the contemporary culture wars. I mean, Prohibition was a sort of culture war issue too, as some historians have written. And I agree with that. And essentially, even in this issue,

you have Christians, and of course other religious groups too, but primarily Christians in the US in the 20s and the 90s, are on both sides of this issue. And they're deploying pretty sophisticated arguments. And along that line, I think it's easy for folks today to think of prohibition as this kind of backwards thing that we know we tried it for like a decade and a half and didn't work. We revealed

it and we kind of try to ignore it, even though it's at the foundation for the war on drugs today and the expansion of federal intervention into drug policies. But you also have the shift in terms of how religious folks tended to think about the relation of their faith to politics and in that argument i basically say prohibition was an innovation it was a new sort of way of thinking about faith and alcohol it was a new all of an alcoholist's evil period but it never been the case throughout judeo-ch-Christian tradition for thousands of years. They've always think of, you know, wine is a good thing in moderation, even in a mandatory communion. In the late 1800s, all of a sudden, there are people, folks taking wine out of their communion and think all alcohol is bad.

That's a really innovative way of looking at, you know, how one does one's religion, the relationship with tradition. And so in my book, I'm basically arguing that the more traditionalist perspective was against prohibition. Prohibition was seen as not this sort of traditionalist conservative thing at all. It was innovative. It was new. It was, you know, authentically, I would argue, sort of this Americanist idea of we can recreate the world in our own image according to our own common sense of any given period. And that becomes like the new orthodoxy. So like I teach at a southern baptist school i have to be anglican myself you know i'm glad that they let me teach there and you know my faith tradition doesn't have as much of a problem with you know the communion wine whereas for southern baptists this has been a thing for 100

years now and now it's a new orthodoxy but if you look back 200 years you have baptists like elijah craig one of the first distillers of bourbon in the world, you know. And when he died, there was no hint of scandal about that. It's just, you know, Baptist ministers could make and distill whiskey. And there wasn't even a batting of an eye 200 years ago. But you go back 100 years to the present, all of a sudden, this is like the new orthodoxy. So, and I argue that basically for a lot of different denominations in america that we think of prohibition as something that's backward but i would argue it's really innovative and has set the stage for a lot of the modern world we live in

whether we're talking about racial politics we're talking about the way the government thinks about about drug and mass incarceration prohibition really changed a lot of things and again even though yes it has changed a lot of the way people think about american religion and politics there is a wide spectrum of views even going back to prohibition and back then it didn't really line up on like left versus right it was more of are we taking more of a traditionalist stance on alcohol that moderate use is okay or maybe we should have regulation rather than bans versus this really idealistic perfectionistic impulse to cleanse politics and you know get rid of alcohol the alcohol is pure evil this sort of dichotomistic manichaean sort of view of the world good evil black white and that's what really i

think drove prohibition is this americanist idea to perfect society and it was very at the time tied with progressivism which was trying to make society better. And yes, sometimes that sort of ideology in the past, in the teens and 20s, a lot of progressives were employed in a way that was also trying to take away the vote from unworthy folks. So that was tied in with Jim Crow in the sound. have this weird mixture 100 years ago of you know more cutting edge modernistic thinking people but also what we would now think of as sort of regressive racial attitudes so it's complicated and i argue that that's the way it is in culture wars right it's complicated things change over time but as now like then people with different religious perspectives even within the christian community there's a wide range of perspectives on any given issue, especially like laden culture war issues. People make religious arguments across the spectrum today.

And that's still the case over 100 years ago with Prohibition, too. Was this the start of culture wars or had they been going on long before? Well, I mean, it depends on how you want to define culture wars. I mean, we could argue that abolitionism and slavery was a sort of culture war. Prohibition was a sort of culture war. And-abolition was a sort of culture war. And, of course, we've got a whole bunch of culture wars today about gender and sexuality, mostly. But, yeah, I think maybe, I mean, culture war, it's a concept language that gets deployed in the late 19th century Germany, the Kulturkampf. But it's applied to different things.

I'd say any sort of major battle over a key issue, I would say probably the slavery controversy in the 1840s, 50s and 60s in the U.S. That was sort of like a culture war issue. But it's interesting that after slavery, none of these issues have actually brought about civil war, which I think is actually somewhat remarkable. And I'm glad that they haven't resulted in war. But nevertheless, I mean, these sort of issues do really disrupt faith communities and, you know, regardless of just America in general. And I think it's important for us to know, like, how is it that these issues are dividing communities and people even within like same churches are taking different perspectives on it and

using sometimes religious arguments and sometimes racial arguments to justify those positions. It's interesting. I guess we have hundreds of years of progressive people trying to, you know, adapt to the future. And we have people always trying to claw us back and drag us back or stay in their positions of power and security, I guess. It's all power and money, I guess, when it comes down to it, really, but yeah, it's always interesting, you know, I mean, I guess you can go back to who is the guy that they killed because he wouldn't believe in God theory of the universe. Yeah. Which one? Yeah.

Pick any one of them. You know, there's, there's been this war going on of, of it. You know, I, you see it now what's going on with, with power and money and, and you know, a lot of people are frightened that, you know, in 2050, it's projected that white people won't be the majority in this country. And there's a lot of voters that are afraid of that. I've seen Republican voters state openly that they are afraid of immigrants and other people coming to this country and the rise of minorities because they'll vote and they're going to make more voters when they have kids and

and we won't and and part of the fear is the shame and regret of every the ugliness of what we white people have done in this country for 450 years and and you know the worry i've heard them say they vocalized you know they're probably going to be as bad to us as we were to them and so they're afraid of that overturn of power which is really interesting kind of point of view to have maybe if you if you want people to treat you better you should treat them better that could be i think jesus wrote something about that i don't know uh i'm an atheist it quotes a lot of jesus stuff out of the book i mean it's a book. He's got some great quotes.

It's a good self-help manual, how to live life and be a good person. I mean, as an atheist, sometimes I'll be like, what would Jesus do? If we could just get more Christians to do that, we'd be probably better off. One other question I had for you in the book, it's just stunning, the history of this country. You talk about between Catholics and Protestants and the relationship between those. So was there some infighting there that went on or some sort of? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, a lot of U.S. Protestants, just Protestants in general, until sort of recently, actually, in the late 20th century, used to see Catholics as just the worst, you know, as a big threat. What's interesting to me is that in the 1880s, the same time where there's attempts by white Protestants who are drives, that is prohibitionists, to reach out to African-Americans and vice versa.

In other words, interracial cooperation on prohibition. You also have attempts to win over Roman Catholics. And as late as the 1910s, you know, one of the speakers at like the National Anti-Saloon League Convention, like 1912, was a Roman Catholic priest. So you have this weird ecumenism about prohibition that's trying to reach across the lines, you know, that divide Protestants and Catholics. But in practice, the vast majority of Catholics in the United States are not prohibitionists, right? And so you still have this general sense that the heavy lifting in the prohibition coalition is like Baptist, Methodist, you know, Churches of Christ, Presbyterian, these kind of guys. And Episcopalians and Lutherans and Roman Catholics and these traditionalist denominations, they're kind of holding it

arm's length. But yeah, the near the low point of Protestant Catholic relations about prohibition is not in the 1880s and 90s. It's later on in 1928, because, of course, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928 is Albert Emanuel Smith, who is the child of immigrants. He's from the New York Fourth Ward, got this New York accent. He's a wet. He wants to repeal prohibition personally. And he's very, you know, unashamed about it. Pretty public. And so this is this conundrum in the South because the South saw the Democratic Party is like the party of until pretty recently, you know, 60 years ago, the Democratic Party in the South was really, you know, the party of white supremacy. And so in 1928, Southern Democrats are worrying, like,

what are we going to do? Because we've got to vote for the Democrat. But also, when it comes to the Republican candidate, he's a Protestant, and he's a dry. And the Democratic, you know, candidate, he's a Catholic, and he's a wet. And he's from candidate he's a catholic and he's a wet and he's from new york you know we can't vote for this guy either and so across the south there's this political earthquake going on of questioning should we or shouldn't we vote for the democratic

candidate should we break and i basically argue in my chapter you know rebels against roman romanism so instead of having the democratic party being the party of, as they said, Republicans in the 1880s said it's a party of rum, Romanism, rebellion, you know, now it's these former rebels turning against both rum and Roman Catholicism explicitly in the candidate Val Smith. So, yeah, that's the time in 28 when anti-Catholic rhetoric in the U.S. kind of reaches an all-time low mark. It's just like, I mean, in terms of it's bad. It's all the torrents, the floodgates that anti-Catholicists are reporting for because Protestants are worried that, you know, Catholics are going to take over if we let this guy win. And so even in the deep South,

you have states like Texas and Florida that are voting for Republicans, some of them for the first time ever. And it's because of this fear of Catholicism. You have the only Prohibition Party candidate to ever win a governor's office wins it in the late 19-teens in Florida. Sidney Johnson-Katz, who's horribly racist, horribly anti-Catholic, and also a big proponent of Prohibition. And so these things go hand in hand later rather than earlier, which goes against kind of the

narrative of like America's kind of getting better and better and better. It's like, well, it depends on the issue. When it comes to prohibition, anti-Catholicism ramps up in the 1910s and 20s and then sort of dies down during repeal during the 30s because we've got bigger fish to fry and, you know, prohibition's being repealed and maybe Roman Catholics aren't so bad after all. And so that's kind of, I think, a look up for two in culture where sometimes we think things are going to get better and they don't. Yeah.

Well, how crazy. And then, of course, you saw that, you know, Catholics were, you know, a lot of people were against John F. Kennedy. There was like, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't know if he can win because he's a Catholic. And you just look at that now and you're just like, seriously? Yeah. I mean, Biden's the second U.S. president who's Catholic and nobody knows or cares.

You know, it's like, this isolic and nobody knows or cares you know it's like this is kind of a big deal you know that we have a catholic president and the supreme court majority catholics whether they're liberal or conservative you know it's like you know most supreme court is mostly catholic if that happened you know 80 years ago yeah protestants would have set their hair on fire you know if they knew that the supreme court was majority catholic or the president was catholic and so we got two out of three branches of government you know, if they knew that the Supreme Court was majority Catholic or the president was Catholic. And so we've got two out of three branches of government, you know, that are controlled by Catholics. And nobody cares because partly that's because of reforms in the Catholic Church in Vatican

II in the 60s, where they're kind of calming down and making themselves more palatable to Protestants. But also because on culture war issues, you know, ever since like Phyllis Schlafly, this Roman Catholic woman, you know, housewife and mother of many and she bills herself as anti-feminist even though her own political empowerment was made possible by feminists a generation earlier and here she is you know speaking out against feminism and of course she's like an icon she just died a few years ago but she did more than probably any one person to cement this kind of alliance between conservative catholics conservative protestants

and so nowadays it doesn't matter whether you're conservative, Protestant, or Catholic. When it comes to politics, it matters, are you a conservative or are you a liberal, right? And so both Catholics and Protestants fit those bills. And so this is weird sort of situation where your denomination doesn't matter as much as who you're voting for, you know? And I think that goes back to this, what made Catholicism more acceptable in American policy and culture is this idea that my political enemies

are more important than my religious opponents. Wow. Note to self, move to Canada. Fuck it. I'm done. I'm just done. I'm so done. I don't know.

I may have to just to get out of a fascist country in 20 or 2024 2022 24 the anyway this is this is so amazing to learn and just uh it deepens our history of understanding our history of what's going on and how insidious this has been with our racial politics and religious politics and you know what white nationalism and everything else what we're fighting right now you know the betsy devosses who want to you know turn white nationalism and everything else, what we're fighting right now, you know, the Betsy DeVos's who want to, you know, turn us into a theocracy and some of that going on. And, you know, the funny thing about that is, I mean, she's my understanding. She's a big Calvinist.

And it's like a lot of little right. Don't realize that she's, you know, the way what she wants is is her Calvinist religion. And it will become American ISIS and ban all other sort of religions. It's really just, it's just the same to me, but it's, it's important that we understand these histories and learn about them as well. Anything more you want to touch on about the book before we go out? Yeah, sure. I mean, we, we, we talked about a lot of the lowlights of the book and like, oh man, I don't want people to think like, oh, you're going to read this book and get depressed,

right? There's a lot. i'm just getting depressed i'm sorry yeah i mean this is interesting i mean it definitely ties into a lot of these issues you're bringing up um although one great thing about my book is you know everyone i'm writing about is dead so number one it's like yeah you can you can make those parallels but i'm kind of i'm kind of throwing it out there to the readers like you make the connections you're right so i'm not just talking about what i'm talking about in the past. Second thing, there's a lot of interesting folks that I want people to learn more about. One of them is John B. Rayner. He's an African American guy, really interesting life story, always had the political bug. And he kept on changing his perspective. So he's born,

he raises, you know, his dad was a white guy, actually. So he's interracial. His dad was a Whig politician in North Carolina. And then he grows up Republican during Reconstruction, moves over to Texas, becomes a populist. And in the 80s, 1880s, he's dry. He actually goes out, reaches out to prohibitionists and says, hey, I want to work with you guys to promote prohibition. By the 19-0s, he's anti-prohibition, right?

So he's all over the place politically. But these sorts of folks like Rayner, they're really complicated. I really like them. I think there hasn't been enough discussion about them. And honestly, one of the things I want to talk about in the book is, and I'd like people to read about, is African-Americans have been treated as though they didn't do anything in terms of prohibition. A lot of the book is in terms of white supremacist views by white-white drives and blaming African-Americans for their problems as sometimes people tend in the past. And, but let's look at what African-Americans themselves were doing. And I think looking at their perspective of why are they either trying to support prohibition or

not? Why are they changing the views over time? How is it that these culture war coalitions kind of shift? And I really think it's important to give some attention to, although the book is divided between a lot of different figures. How are African-Americans kind of taking agency? How are they trying to take control of the situation as much as they can? And they're making pretty difficult choices sometimes. And, you know, why are they doing that? And let's think about how not only are they making these choices, but they're really important. One of the things that intrigued me about African-Americans is, number one, lots of people were talking about race 100 years ago, about prohibition.

And yet a lot of sources today by historians and other academics were saying, ah, but African-Americans didn't. Jim Crow was already in place. They didn't get to vote, essentially. And I said, yeah, but the evidence says just that they did like you look at primary sources newspapers and accounts everyone's saying african-americans played like really decisive roles in like statewide elections and all these sorts of local elections about prohibition and i'm just kind of scratching my head why isn't that anybody's really talking about this and i think sometimes the narrative of you know white supremacists are doing white supremacist things drowned out the fact that what were african-americans doing right and also in terms of religion what were these religious minorities doing like nobody

talks about lutherans and culture wars right it was like baptists methodists you know and they're important and there are a lot of people but what about the dissenters and that's what i want to really want to hone in on in my book i'm looking at forces we're asking these historical questions what about the outliers you know know, what were African Americans doing? Did they make a difference? Yes, they did. But also Episcopalians, you know,

yeah, they existed 100 years ago too. Did they have anything to say about prohibition? Yeah, they did. And not only were they speaking out, but they were speaking out against it. And sometimes these were leading figures

like Bishop, including like the head Bishop of the whole Episcopal Church coming out like saying, I don't think prohibition is a great idea in 1911 and that could like help shift some of these really close races in like you know arkansas and texas so basically looking at what were kind of the dissenting voices religiously or racially what were they doing what were they saying and did they make a difference and i basically argue yeah they did

and why haven't folks talked about this? Because they weren't asking those questions. So I really want us, like when we're thinking about these sorts of issues in the past and the present, let's look for the outliers because sometimes those are the key to understanding some key events. And when we're not asking bigger questions and frankly, being more inclusive in terms of who are we considering as we ask these questions, we can miss big pieces of the puzzle and kind of draw wrong conclusions. So it's not just about like, yeah, let's include voices because we're trying to be inclusive.

It's because we want to get the facts right. And what we reveal when we look at, ask these sorts of questions about were there any outliers is you have African-Americans playing a big role in the South in prohibition. You have religious minorities like Episcopalians and Lutherans and Roman Catholics playing decisive roles in these contests. And you have, you know, surprises that come up that give us a more accurate understanding of the past than if we were just staying to kind of the well-worn, this is the conventional wisdom

that we've always heard. Yeah. It's, it's important people learn history. I mean, there's a saying that I always have that I, I did. I think it's a rip off kind of an, it's a, it's an, uh,

admin. It's, it's some sort of innovation I've done on somebody else's thing. The one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history. So thereby we just keep going on our cyclical nature. So thank you very much for writing the book. It's really important. We learn all these things. And that's what I love about my

show. We have these great historians like yourself, researchers and people from esteemed institutions that have done the, you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of hours of research and help shine a light and educate people more so that our history has, is painted in more and our history is not whitewash you know i mean i was raised with a history that was just oh there's a bunch of white paint there you go that's your history there buddy it's a jesus and john wayne a quote from a friend's book christian dube anyway guys uh thank you for being on the show we really appreciate it thank you it's been a pleasure and a delight. Thank you. Give me your Twitter account so people can find you on the interwebs there.

Yeah. So it's BJJPayne, P-A-Y-N-E, is the handle at Twitter. So please follow me on Twitter and I'll let you know when my website is presentable and decent. Get that website up. There you go. Thanks for tuning in to my audience. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. Go order the book. You definitely want to learn more about history because otherwise you're just a mark and you don't understand history. You don't understand the future. The book is called Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow, Prohibition and the Transformation of Racial and Religious Politics in the South, Making the Modern South by Brenda J.J. Payne. Order it today.

Thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit the bell notification. Go to goodreads.com, Forrest S. Chris Voss, and all the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those places. Be good to each other, stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.