VIDEO: Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman Remembers Prohibition

         

  Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman

Steven A. Levine 

Coordinator for Educational Programs

Eighty one years ago today, the United States ended Prohibition, its failed experiment in making alcohol, the nation’s  most popular drug, illegal.  From 1920-1933, the 18^th Amendment to the Constitution banned the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes."  Watch a video of La Guardia Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman describing how easy it was to consume alcohol during Prohibition and a Universal Newspaper Newsreelproduced when Prohibition was repealed.

Fiorello La Guardia was also a leading opponent of Prohibition.  To learn more about his views on Prohibition and their similarities to current arguments in favor of marijuana legalization; you can read “Marijuana Legalization Arguments Similar to La Guardia's Arguments Against Prohibition” on the Archives’ blog. 

If you are so inclined, you can also make a toast to the 21^st Amendment that made your drink possible today.

Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman Remembers the 1939 New York World's Fair

Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman 

Remembers the 1939 New York World's Fair

Steven A. Levine

Coordinator for Educational Programs 

On Sunday April 30, 1939, the New York World’s Fair officially opened with a formal ceremony that included a speech by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Fair’s opening was selected to coincide with the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration as the first president of the United States in New York City.

In commemoration of the Fair’s opening, the La Guardia and Wagner Archives has posted on its YouTube channel a video containing footage of the Fair and the memories of La Guardia Community College Professor Emerita Janet Lieberman visiting the Fair. The video was compiled and edited by Sandy Chase.

The 1939 New York World’s Fair offered a vision of a utopian city of tomorrow—one in which life was going to be easy thanks to new technology that would revolutionize transportation, home economics and daily life. Yet, the Fair made no mention of war, no sense of a troubled present, in spite of the looming world nightmare.