James Black (prohibitionist)

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James Black (1823 – 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 Union County, 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).

Most sources list 1893 as the year of Black's death, but the Library of Congress lists it as 1894.