Georgia Woman’s Christian Temperance Union records

The first Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in Georgia was founded in Atlanta after Eliza Stewart, one of those instrumental in the 1874 founding of the national WCTU, spoke to a group of Atlanta temperance advocates. After the initial contact, other national WCTU organizers, including Frances E. Willard, visited cities and towns throughout the state. By 1883 there were enough unions in the state to organize the Georgia Woman's Christian Temperance Union. The state organization located its headquarters in Atlanta and beginning in 1930 occupied the North Highland Avenue house that is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Jane Elizabeth Sibley (Mrs. William C. Sibley), Missouri H. Stokes, Mrs. E.E. Harper, Jennie Hart Sibley, and Rebecca Latimer Felton (Mrs. W.H. Felton) were among the women who provided leadership during the state union's early years.

The WCTU as a whole was primarily a temperance organization, but because its leaders, if not its members, identified alcohol as a root of most social ills, they participated in many of the social reform movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Although members of southern unions were less reform-minded than some of their northern sisters, the Georgia WCTU did work toward reform in a number of areas including municipal and sanitary improvements, the rehabilitation of prostitutes, and the abolition of the convict lease system. In the area of prison reform, the Georgia women also advocated the establishment of separate facilities for women and juvenile offenders. They urged Georgia legislators to build an industrial school for girls, to pass child labor laws, and to provide for compulsory education.

The woman's suffrage movement, which the national Woman's Christian Temperance Union supported, created problems for the southern unions. In the 1890s the Georgia union nearly collapsed when the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, led by Bishop Warren A. Candler, withdrew its support because the national WCTU had adopted woman suffrage as part of its platform. In the face of bitter opposition, the Georgia union leaders had to make clear the state organizations' independence from the national body in choosing what programs it would follow. Additionally, they announced that support of woman's suffrage would detract from their primary mission and that they would not adopt the national union's position. The issue continued to trouble the Georgia union, and when efforts to vote prohibition met defeat after defeat, some union leaders in Georgia began to advocate the vote for women as the only way to succeed at the polls.

From the beginning, education and legislation constituted the two main thrusts of WCTU work in Georgia. The Georgia union reached a major goal when, in 1901, the Georgia General Assembly passed a bill requiring the public schools to teach what the WCTU called "scientific temperance instruction" incorporating the effects of alcohol and drugs on the human body. A second milestone was passed when statewide prohibition went into effect in 1907. Thereafter, the Georgia union pursued similar goals in providing education about the evils of alcohol and in attaining legal prohibition.

After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, the struggle to survive sometimes became one of the organization's primary goals. Between 1928 and 1937 membership in the Georgia union fell from 7,284 to 3,784. National organizers visited the state regularly over the next three decades to establish new local unions and to revive failing ones. Despite these efforts, membership campaigns, and constant reminders to local unions to "hold fast," the organization slowly faded as its leaders grew older with few young leaders to step in to carry on the mission.

A board of officers elected at the annual state convention each October governed the Georgia WCTU. The annual meetings met in various locations around the state. The offices of president and of corresponding secretary were the most powerful; other offices such as vice president, treasurer and recording secretary were less important and sometimes remained unfilled. Depending upon what national programs the state union adopted, the president could appoint superintendents over departments that focused on particular issues. Frequently, however, the president doubled as department superintendent in one or more areas. Local unions in cities, towns, and counties were organized according to ten districts that corresponded to congressional districts. Although district presidents theoretically headed these geographical units, these posts often remained unfilled as well.

The relationships between the local, state, and national levels of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union were fairly fluid. Only the total abstinence pledge tied lower unions to the parent bodies. Other connections depended upon the voluntary cooperation of the lower unions. The national organization frequently helped establish and strengthen state and local bodies. In Georgia, the first union was founded as a result of a visit by a national speaker. Thereafter, and particularly in the early years, the national WCTU sent organizers and lecturers into the state to foster expansion.

Another way the national WCTU influenced the state and local unions was by establishing program goals. Departments, organized to work in certain areas of emphasis and headed by superintendents, developed program material for the state and local unions to use in pursuit of specific goals. However, no union at either the state or local level was required to adopt any particular goal.

The organization and focus of the Georgia WCTU and its relationship to the national body remains consistent while the union's strength ebbs and flows according to the currency of particular issues. In 1982 the Georgia union moved out of the building on North Highland Avenue in Atlanta to new quarters in Union City, Georgia, to continue its work. Information in this brief administrative history was drawn from Mrs. J.J. Ansley's History of the Georgia WCTU, 1883-1907, (Columbus, GA, 1914) and Ruth Bordin's Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty, 1873-1900 (Philadelphia, 1981) as well as from unpublished materials in the collection.