Paul Thompson's work focuses on the prohibition elections held in the city of Atlanta, Georgia in the years 1885 and 1887, and makes a valuable contribution not just to our understanding of the religious and political dimensions of the prohibition movement in the American south, but to our appreciation for the role of race in this movement's growth. As Atlanta re-emerged from the ashes of the Civil War and Sherman's visit, voters enacted, then subsequently retracted, prohibition in the city. Historians of temperance and prohibition in the south have explored this two-year experiment before, but Thompson's study gives us something new and insightful: an examination of the role of Atlanta's booming black population in these two elections. He pays careful attention to the efforts of Atlanta African Americans themselves, as well as to the way that white pro- and anti-prohibitionists sought to attract black votes for their cause.

In chapter 1, Thompson explores what he terms the “evangelical reform nexus” that emerged out of a convergence of revivalism and Republican ideology in the era of the early republic. The theologians who championed evangelistic revivalism in the early 1800s (Dwight, Beecher, Finney, etc.) were also early advocates of temperance, and some of them even had direct bearing on the emergence of temperance sentiment amongst black residents of Atlanta. The founder of the city's first black temperance society was ordained by Finney, for example. Thompson highlights the way in which temperance was a central component of the “active Christianity” promoted by revivalism as well as an essential virtue of “Christian Republicanism.”

Chapter 2 delves deeper into the influence of this reform nexus upon Atlanta African Americans by looking at the influx of missionaries into post-war Atlanta. The American Missionary Association was committed to the “cultural uplift” of African Americans in Atlanta and across the south, and temperance became a key part of that uplift. Thompson carefully documents the way in which textbooks, tracts, and missionary activity created significant black support for temperance in the 1860s and 1870s. Chapters 3 and 4 describe how leaders of the black community in Atlanta had, by the 1880s, come to embrace temperance as essential to the improvement of black social and economic conditions. Black-run mutual aid societies and benevolent societies emerged to offer African Americans in Atlanta greater independence from whites, and these societies embraced temperance as an essential virtue and often as a condition for membership.

In chapter 5 Thompson examines Atlanta's 1885 prohibition election. He pays particular attention to the arguments used by both drys and wets to attract black support. Supporters of prohibition effectively used themes of racial uplift, improved race relations, and “manhood” to sway black men to their side. Anti-prohibitionists emphasized the potential economic costs of prohibition to blacks and reminded black voters of the sketchy racial attitudes of leading white prohibitionists. Thompson carefully analyzes both the election-day tactics of each side and the final results of the election, which went in the direction of the prohibitionists and dried up Atlanta. Chapter 6 explores the aftermath of the election and Atlanta's two-year experiment with prohibition (though since existing liquor licenses were honored and many did not expire until a year after the election, true prohibition was actually only in place for about one year). He pays particular attention to the loopholes and inconsistencies of prohibition in Atlanta. Wealthier whites, for example, could still acquire liquor in larger quantities through the “jug trade,” or procure it by the drink at higher-end “wine rooms” in the city. By the end of the prohibition experiment, Thompson finds, blacks in the city could find little evidence that prohibition was benefitting them in any way.

Georgia had a mandatory two-year waiting period between referendums on the same issue could appear on a ballot, which set the stage for an 1887 effort by anti-prohibitionists to undo what had happened in 1885. In chapter 7 Thompson looks at how antis successfully attracted black voters to their side in the campaign leading up to the vote. By pointing out the contradictions in the current enforcement of prohibition, wets successfully bonded blacks and poor whites into a voting bloc. Appeals were made to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, as anti-prohibitionists equated prohibition with slavery.

On Election Day prohibition was repealed, and its supporters blamed black voters for their defeat. When it came to voting for prohibition, it turned out that black Atlantans would be damned if they did or damned if they did not, for in the aftermath of these elections both wet and dry whites became convinced that trying to harness the black vote was a futile and capricious endeavor. By the end of the decade, whites on both sides of the prohibition issue began to view these black voters as a threat and became more unified in their desire to disfranchise black men. In Atlanta and across the south, the following decade would see disfranchisement become a reality for black men. Whites would view it as a way of purifying the debate over prohibition, removing the need for each side to appeal to black voters. It would also eliminate their fear that dividing the white, Democratic electorate on this issue would open the door for Republican (i.e., African American) rule. The fray over prohibition in Atlanta and across the American south thus set the stage for the Jim Crow laws and insidious inequality that would dominate the region for much of the twentieth century.

Thompson's thoughtful and well-researched examination of prohibition in Atlanta greatly enriches our understanding of and appreciation for the struggle over alcohol sales not only in that city, but across the south in the 1880s. Atlanta's story is the story of the larger south, as evidenced by the very similar elections held in Texas and Tennessee in 1887 with similar outcomes. Thompson's work also gives us a greater appreciation for the role of African American voters and religious leaders in the prohibition movement, whose voices have for too long been unheard in works on this topic.