Gioia diliberto biography channel

Prohibition as a law — as well as the larger social movement behind it, temperance — was spearheaded by women. Both temperance and suffrage, in fact, coalesced as political issues in the post-Civil War era. So, the male leadership in the Executive Branch of the U. Government gave the most unenviable job in the country to a female: lawyer Mabel Walker Willebrandt, who became assistant attorney general in She was charged with enforcing the Volstead Act, the legal mechanism behind the 18th Amendment.

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Willebrandt is a fascinating individual largely lost to history, and Diliberto spends many pages exploring her zealous work effort and unconventional for the time personal life. Among other things, Willebrandt pioneered the use of tax laws to target bootleggers, the strategy eventually used to take down Capone. She also strung along a besotted suitor for years, lived with other single women, and adopted a daughter as a divorcee, all unusual actions in the s and 30s.

She ordered speakeasy raids timed to benefit Herbert Hoover, who was running for president and who she believed would nominate her as a judge or attorney general. She campaigned vociferously for Hoover and carried out politically motivated prosecutions. In the end, however, she was thrown under the bus by her male colleagues over the unpopularity of Prohibition.

She returned to private law practice but never received the judgeship she craved. WONPR supported or opposed candidates, organized in communities across the country, held speeches and marches, and became the leading force behind the Prohibition-repeal movement. Although she was the least politically important of the four women profiled, Guinan adds vibrancy to the narrative as a hustler, mob associate, and actress who lived in the demimonde of the Jazz Age.

By the early s, Boole and Sabin represented opposite ends of the Prohibition spectrum; the reader knows how the battle ends.