Heritage Images/Getty Images
On June 5, 1900, a woman dressed in black stepped into a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas. The towering figure, standing over 6 feet tall, carried an armload of heavy packages wrapped in brown paper. “I don’t want to strike you, but I am going to break up this den of vice,” she told the owner, just before chucking one of her packages behind the bar, shattering the large mirror and toppling liquor bottles. The men fled, leaving the woman to meticulously smash every bottle of alcohol in the saloon.
This was no spur-of-the-moment bout of bar vandalism. It was just the start of Carrie A. Nation s crusade against alcohol.