“Let the Whiskey Question Alone”: William Calvin Chase and Black Anti-Prohibitionist Sentiment in Washington, D.C.

Abstract As editor of the Washington Bee , a Black owned newspaper based in Washington, D.C., during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, William Calvin Chase waged a vigorous campaign against Prohibition. Among the targets of his crusade were ministers, politicians, civic leaders, and other anti-liquor reformers concerned about the effects of alcohol consumption on society. This article explores Chase’s anti-prohibitionist rhetoric in the Washington Bee. It contends that, in the process of his anti-prohibitionist crusade, Chase flagged racism, racial violence, and Jim Crow as problems far more injurious to the Black community than the consumption and sale of alcohol. In so doing, it situates Chase and his rhetoric within the larger tradition of Black intellectual resistance as he leveraged the Bee to counter arguments in support of anti-alcohol reforms that swept the nation during the Progressive Era.