News
Monday, November 02, 2009
Prohibition, Bootlegging, and Speak-Easies in… South Bend!
Heather and her husband James at Chicory Cafe
Heather Yarbrough has always been drawn to the study of US history in the 1920s and 1930s. It seemed to be a carefree, exciting and even unreal time, with the clashing contradictions of poverty and decadence, of innocence and lawlessness, idealism and corruption. Her love of this period in US history and especially her favorite city, New Orleans, led her first to create a French Quarter style coffee house in downtown South Bend, the Chicory Cafe. There she’s tried to bring a little piece of New Orleans to Indiana.
She also decided to pursue her interest in this period in an independent research project with History Professor Lisa Zwicker. She began with the question: Did the innocent and law-abiding citizens of Northwest Indiana have the same big city attitudes as the residents of Chicago, New York, and New Orleans? As she delved into primary sources in archives and libraries in Northwest Indiana, she discovered that the South Benders DID, in fact, bootleg like crazy! And surprisingly, no one had done a thorough investigation of this subject for South Bend, or even Northwest Indiana. She uncovered dozens of newspaper articles in the libraries, court records in the St. Joseph county archives, and fascinating people who could provide first-person accounts of the time. Police busts of more than one hundred people at a time included mayors and chiefs of police. Small bootleggers also plied the trade, as it was the only way many could afford to feed their family. She even discovered a local “legend” that is still bringing the blues to Mishawaka: Martha’s Midway Tavern had its beginnings during Prohibition and is still going strong.
To do justice to the treasure trove of sources she uncovered would require a book length study. So together with her advisor, Professor Lisa Zwicker (History), she decided on a final project of organizing the beginnings of a South Bend Prohibition archive. She gathered nearly one hundred sources and annotated them for future researchers. Scott Shuler, Archivist at The Center for History for Northern Indiana, has taken an interest in her findings and would like to build on her research. Watch for more information on Prohibition in the planned display at the Center for History. Find out why Al Capone, infamous gangster and customer at Martha’s Midway Tavern,said “Prohibition has made nothing but trouble!”
