James Black (prohibitionist)

James Black (prohibitionist).

James Black (September 23, 1823 – December 16, 1893) became a leader of the temperance movement in the United States after having a bad experience with alcohol intoxication, if not alcohol poisoning.

Black was born in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania to John Black and Jane Egbert Black. He married Eliza Murray in 1845.

Black was actively involved in establishing the Good Templars, a temperance organization. In addition, he co-founded the National Temperance Society and Publishing House with Neal S. Dow, another pioneering temperance leader. In its first 60 years, the publishing house printed over one billion pages. It published three monthly periodicals with a combined circulation of about 600,000. It also published over 2,000 books and pamphlets plus textbooks, flyers, broadsides and other temperance materials.

In 1869, Black and some of his friends founded the Prohibition Party. Three years later he was selected to run as the party’s presidential candidate. However, he won only 5,607 votes. Possibly one reason for the low vote he received was that the powerful Anti-Saloon League, under the direction of Wayne Wheeler, would not support third party candidates. The same was true of the influential Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

Black authored Is There a Necessity for a Prohibition Party?. (NY: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1876) and Brief History of Prohibition and of the Prohibition Reform Party. (NY: National Committee of the Prohibition Reform Party, 1880).

Black died, according to his obituary in The New York Times, at his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on 16 December 1893 of pneumonia. He was 70 years old.

Sources

• "Obituary," The New York Times, 17 December 1893, 2.
• OurCampaigns biography
• The Political Graveyard

References

• Tuttle, Elizabeth. Cheers! "Temperance society urges sobriety in bootleg era." Terre Haute, IN: Vigo County Historical Society, June 9, 1985.

• Wilson, James G., et al. (eds.) Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography. NY: Appleton & Co., 1887-1889, and 1999.

Party political offices
Preceded by (none)	Prohibition Party presidential nominee 1872 (lost)	Succeeded by Green Clay Smith