Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow

Brendan J. J. Payne's Gin, Jesus, and Jim Crow examines how the prohibition movement realigned southern religious practice and racial politics by tying alcohol restriction to political preaching and Black disfranchisement.

Tracing debates from the 1880s to the 1930s, Payne shows how white prohibitionists initially courted but then sought to exclude Black voters, recasting prohibition as a means of racial control.

The book analyzes religious innovations that transformed churches' doctrines and political engagement, and highlights African-American political agency in opposing statewide prohibition measures.

Payne argues prohibition persisted in the South until the racial and religious order it helped establish was secured, and that its legacy influenced later drug policy and mass incarceration.

This work situates prohibition within broader culture-war and progressive-era reform movements, revealing complex cross-confessional and interracial dynamics.