About This Lesson
The very real issues of alcoholism, domestic abuse, and crime inspired the American Temperance Movement, which advocated abstinence from alcohol. Later, during the early 20th century, nativists increasingly blamed the United States' new immigrant populations for the degradation of what they saw as "traditional American values." How and why did nativist groups like the Ku Klux Klan work with temperance reformers to help get Prohibition—the constitutional ban on alcohol—passed through the 18th Amendment?
The text for the worksheet is taken from a January 2019 Carnegie Council podcast entitled, "The Crack-Up: Prohibition, Immigration, & the Klan, with Lisa McGirr" and is based upon a New York Times opinion piece written by McGirr.
