Prohibition in Southwestern Michigan

by Norma Lewis, Christine Nyholm

Overview

Even in law-abiding southwestern Michigan, the Eighteenth Amendment turned ordinary citizens into scofflaws and sparked unprecedented unrest. Betta Holloway reached her breaking point when her husband, a Portland cop, was shot pursuing a rumrunner. She relieved his pain with a neighbor's homebrew. As farmers across the region fermented their fruit to make a living, gangsters like A1 Capone amassed extraordinary wealth. Baby Face Nelson came to Grand Haven and proved that he had no aptitude for robbing banks. Even before the Volstead Act passed, Battle Creek bad guy Adam "Pump" Arnold routinely broke all local prohibition laws-and every other law as well. Meanwhile, Carrie Nation hectored Michigan with her "hatchetations." Authors Norma Lewis and Christine Nyholm reveal how the Noble Experiment fueled a rowdy, roaring, decade-long party.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467144803
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	11/09/2020
Series:	American Palate
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	1,154,165
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

"Norma Lewis has lived in southwest Michigan for about thirty years and is now in Grand Haven. She loves local history and enjoys the thrill of the hunt when doing researching, mainly because she almost always finds something better than what she thought she was looking for. This is her seventeenth book and her ninth with Arcadia Publishing/The History Press. Along with local histories, she writes silly animal books for children."


"Christine Nyholm has always lived in the Great Lakes region and made a career in business sales and marketing in Milwaukee and Chicago. She currently calls beautiful Grand Haven, Michigan, home. She has a variety of interests and has written online about topics including entertainment, travel, history, health and more. This is her third book about local topics in Michigan, with other titles including Images of America: Muskegon and 100 Things to Do in Grand Rapids Before You Die."

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction 9

1 Early Attempts and Why They Failed 13

2 Who Wanted Prohibition and What They Did to Get It 28

3 Those Against Prohibition and How They Tried to Stop It 39

4 Bootlegging, Blind Pigs and Bathtub Gin 50

5 Enforcement of the Volstead Act 64

6 The Volstead Act Turned Ordinary Citizens into Criminals 78

7 Organized Crime 86

8 The End of an Era 113

Selected Bibliography 121

Index 123

About the Authors 127