Carrie Nation in Commerce, TX

My APUSH students have recently been discussing the Age of Reform in the build-up to the Civil War, including the Temperance Crusade and the Women's Rights Movement. When young women grew tired of their drunk, abusive husbands spending the family money on alcohol, they spoke up and demanded a stop to the selling/producing of liquor and spirits. This crusade would later lead to Prohibition (a topic noted in this blog post). On the other hand, the Women's Rights Movement (one of the first feminist crusades in the United States) brewed when women were very dissatisfied with male-led institutions (including schools) and desired to have a voice to make changes that would impact their communities. These social movements gradually picked up steam following the Civil War, and defined the twentieth-century Progressive Era in American history. Keeping with this theme of reform, I stumbled upon some interesting facts on Carrie Nation.

Carrie Nation was usually known to wield a hatchet, but she did not carry such a scary instrument when she lectured the youth at East Texas Normal College on March 31, 1905. (Britannica.com)

Carrie Nation, a Kentucky native, was an outspoken supporter of the Temperance Crusade. She created a local chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in Medicine Lodge, Kansas in the 1880s. Nation was often known to be a violent agitator, throwing rocks at the windows of the local taverns while singing a sweet melody, and wielding an infamous hatchet. Between 1900 and 1910, she was arrested more than 30 times for "hatchetations", threatening alcoholics at the pubs. Nation paid her jail fines from the fees she gathered for her lecture tours across the nation during the early 1900s. Since Etta Mayo, a professor of music at East Texas Normal College, was heavily invested in the Women's Rights Movement and Temperance Crusade, Nation was invited to speak on the campus in Commerce in 1905. Mrs. Mayo believed that Nation would "fix" the alcoholics since Commerce was home to an alarming number of saloons. In a letter, librarian Catherine Opal Williams quotes from a letter written by Gladys Mayo, Etta's daughter: "Saloons were numerous in the little town of Commerce...They presented a problem to a growing town with a college. My mother appealed to Francis E. Willard, director of the Temperance Movement in the United States for advice. Their correspondence lent hope and inspiration to my parents and to the towns-women...She [Carrie Nation] must have come to Commerce upon my mother's invitation, and for some time she made her Texas headquarters in our dormitory."

Etta Mayo was the wife of William L. Mayo, founder and inaugural president of East Texas Normal College in Commerce. Etta was a music professor at the institution. (Author's Collections)

Nation's lecture on the dangers of alcohol was well-received among the faculty and student body at East Texas Normal College (and she did not carry her frightening hatchet!). A review in the Commerce Journal of Nation's talk displays the success of this program and her unusual demeanor: "Tuesday morning the students at East Texas Normal College had the privilege of listening to a woman of almost world renown...Instead of a harsh, raving speaker, the idea many have of her, Mrs. Nation is a cool, calm, logical, yet eloquent speaker. After being introduced by Professor [William L.] Mayo, Mrs. Nation began her lecture, which was greatly appreciated by the students...'Purify the home, bring the child up in a Christian way, and that child will kill liquor in the United States,' she says, 'We must have a national prohibition of the liquor curse, making it a crime to manufacture, barter, sell, or give away that which causes 3/4 of all crime, murdering a hundred thousand every year.'"

Prohibition activists, c. 1920. (BBC News)

Nation's strong rhetoric propelled the Temperance Crusade and encouraged many to join the movement. After many decades of meetings, marches, and propaganda outreach, the United States Congress outlawed the production, purchase, and selling of alcoholic beverages by passing the 18th Amendment (1920). The mission of the Temperance advocates was accomplished, yet the majority of Americans missed their drink and began to produce and smuggle alcohol in secret (this was the age of gangsters and speakeasies). Eventually, Congress repealed its original Prohibition act by passing the 21st Amendment in 1933. Such a small, yet golden nugget in the university's history and Commerce's story.