Book signing at Downtown books

Apalachicola, FL. – The University of Georgia Press is proud to announce an upcoming author event for the new book Southern Prohibition, written by Lee Willis, at Downtown Books in Apalachicola, FL on Saturday, October 29th.

Willis, an assistant professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, grew up nearby in Tallahassee and has many close ties to the Apalachicola area. His parents, Lee and Kathy Willis, have been involved in historic preservation in Apalachicola for the last 20 years. Most notably, the family restored the Grady Building, now home to the Grady Market and Consulate. Willis’s new book, Southern Prohibition, examines the history reform movements in the Florida Panhandle, with a great deal of emphasis placed on Apalachicola. Willis is also the coauthor of At the Water’s Edge: A Pictorial and Narrative History of Apalachicola and Franklin County.

Southern Prohibition examines political culture and reform through the evolving temperance and prohibition movements in Middle Florida. Scholars have long held that liquor reform was largely a northern and mid-Atlantic phe­nomenon before the Civil War. Willis takes a close look at the Florida plantation belt to reveal that the campaign against alcohol had a dramatic impact on public life in this portion of the South as early as the 1840s.

Race, class, and gender mores shaped and were shaped by the temperance movement. White racial fears inspired prohibition for slaves and free blacks. Stringent licensing shut down grog shops that were the haunts of common and poor whites, which accelerated gentrification and stratified public drinking along class lines. Restricting blacks’ access to alcohol was a theme that ran through temperance and prohibition campaigns in Florida, but more affluent African Americans also supported prohibition, indicating that the issue was not driven solely by white desires for social control. Women in the plantation belt played a marginal role in comparison to other locales and were denied greater political influence as a result.

Beyond alcohol, Willis also takes a broader look at psychoactive substances to show the veritable pharmacopeia available to Floridians in the nineteenth century. Unlike the campaign against alcohol, however, the tightening regulations on narcotics and cocaine in the early twentieth century elicited little public discussion or concern—a quiet beginning to the state’s war on drugs.

Willis will greet friends and sign copies of Southern Prohibition at Downtown Books from 1 to 3 p.m. on Saturday, October 29th. Downtown Books is located at 67 Commerce Street, Apalachicola, FL 32320-1772, across from the Apalachicola Post office. For more information, call the bookstore at 850-653-1290. 

Saturday, October 29 @ 1 pm/Apalachicola, FL
Downtown Books, 67 Commerce Street, Apalachicola, FL 32320

Book talk and signing

Contact: 850-653-1290

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