Prohibition meant bootlegging and police-sanctioned organized crime.
by Arielle StevensonWhen Prohibition was ratified in 1919 through the 18th Amendment, the so-called “noble experiment” didn’t sit too well with many residents of Tampa and Ybor City.
Hillsborough County was one of the last wet counties in the state, and didn’t comply until April 3, 1919. The Tampa Tribune reported the dramatic moment when Florida Brewing Company drained eight casks of beer into the streets, totaling 22,320 gallons. Scenes in the newspaper depicted children scooping up the dumped-out beer and selling it for 5 cents a pop.
But the farewell was short-lived, says historian Gary Mormino.
“Ybor at this time is a wet island in the deep dry South,” Mormino explains. Italian, Cuban and Spanish immigrants, who worked in the bustling cigar industry, couldn’t understand why anyone would make alcohol illegal. “They couldn’t believe they were being told that they can’t have a glass of wine.”
Only three years earlier, Florida had elected as governor Sidney Johnston Catts, aka “the Cracker Messiah,” who ran as a third-party candidate on the Prohibition platform. Years before that, wives of community powerbrokers had organized women’s temperance groups.
Evangelist and former baseball star Billy Sunday drew 6,000 people to a tent revival in Tampa, where he preached to the good people in hopes of saving a city from sin.
“Everything the devil’s in favor for, I’m against,” Sunday told believers. “I’m against booze and I’m against card parties because the devil’s in favor of them.”
The post-World War I “moral fervor” reached its height from 1916-1918.
“There was a passion for Prohibition,” says Mormino. “The wars had created political connections. Prohibition and immigration restrictions come together in 1921.”
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 limited how many people could come into the United States and from where. Prior to that time, the policy was relatively liberal and “anyone could walk through Ellis Island,” says Mormino. But only Northern Europeans made the cut under the law; Italians, Slavs and Jews weren’t on the list.
For sons of Italian immigrants living in Ybor at that time, there were only a few job opportunities: spend decades working hard in the cigar factories, become an athlete, or work in the underground spheres of illegal gambling and organized crime.
“Bootlegging served as a conduit for attaining Italian goals,” Mormino wrote in his book The Immigrant World of Ybor City. “It allowed Italians an entry into Tampa’s underworld economy, which some used as a springboard to later careers in organized crime, especially bolita.” The underground bolita operations (an illegal game involving gambling on white numbered balls) were the province of Cubans and Spaniards, earning them thousands and thousands of dollars.
Bootlegging came in many forms: Caribbean rum would arrive through lumber shipments inside hallowed-out cedar logs; home distilleries and moonshine making were popular as well. And many contend that the underground tunnels running throughout Ybor City (you already knew about those, right?) were used to store and transport bootlegged liquor.
“This town was wide open,” Mormino says of Tampa’s Prohibition years. Italian bootleggers would deliver to cafes in town that continued to serve booze despite the law. Mormino recalls how prominent Ybor City-born Italian American Sam Ferlita described his bootlegging days.
“I was in high school and had this LaSalle with no rear seat. I used to fit 22 five-gallon jugs of moonshine in the back,” Ferlita said. When he struggled with a heavy load, even the police would help carry deliveries inside.
“The police were in on it,” Mormino says. “Ferlita would say you’re in trouble if you’re not part of the system. You’re in trouble if you’re on your own.”
Play by the illegal rules, or law enforcement (paid by bolita and bootleggers) would take you out. Even the arrest records for illegal alcohol were fictionalized; bootleggers would pay off the police department and names were changed, all to reinforce the impression that Tampa was still “dry.”
In 1933, President Roosevelt passed the 21st Amendment abolishing Prohibition in the United States.
“Prohibition is 100 percent intertwined with Americanism,” Mormino says. “But it was considered ridiculous by 1930.”
Roosevelt, who enjoyed a martini, didn’t realize he’d be dismantling a well-oiled machine of underground corruption in Tampa by doing so. The illegality of alcohol is what made it such a profitable commodity.
Soon, the bustling cigar industry began to falter as Americans tightened their spending.
“Americans had given up expensive cigars,” Mormino says. People migrated North for work. The Great Depression had arrived.
Still flush with funds from bootlegging, Italians made their move into bolita, starting a local war with Tampa native and bolita king Charlie Wall. He came up against Italian mobster Santo Trafficante. It didn’t end well, but without Prohibition it would have been a far less exciting story.
“That’s why the 1920s are so great,” the historian says. “Prohibition adds a theatrical quality.”
Party like a prohibitioner: The Tampa chapter of the United States Bartenders Guild celebrates the end of the 18th Amendment with their fourth annual Repeal Day party at Ybor City’s Don Vicente Historic Inn. Local and guest bartenders will be mixing up classic cocktails from the “Golden Age” of the cocktail, 1850-1919.
Proceeds from the event benefit locally founded nonprofit Because of Ezra and the Museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans. Purchase tickets online at
repealdayparty.com.