Prohibitions First Presidential Candidate was Born In Lewisburg

The first candidate to run for president on the Prohibition Party Ticket was born and educated in Lewisburg Pa.

Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, these are political parties most of us know.  But did you know about the Prohibition Party?   The Prohibition Political Party is the oldest 3rd party  in the United States, and still exists in 2020.  You can see a list of the candidates every year, since 1872, here: http://prohibitionists.org/History/votes/body_votes.html

The very first candidate on that list is James Black, who was born and educated in Lewisburg Pa.  Born in Lewisburg on September 16 1823, he was the son of John & Jane (Egbert) Black.  His family moved to Lancaster Pa around 1836, where James worked at a sawmill, and on the Susquehanna and Tidewater Canal.  In 1841 James returned to Lewisburg to study at the Lewisburg Academy.  After completing his studies there in 1843, he began studying law, and was admitted to the bar in 1846.

In the Historical Dictionary Of The Guilded Age, it states that "As a teenager, Black had been forced to drink alcohol with other boys.  On recovering from the effects, he had vowed to abstain forever." 

Black went on to help organize temperance societies, and he worked fervently for temperance reform.   In 1872 he was nominated as the first Presidential candidate on the Prohibition Party ticket.

The Prohibition Party, the oldest existing third party in the US,  is a political party in the United States best known for its historic opposition to the sale or consumption of alcoholic beverages. It held its first national convention on February 22nd, 1872 in Columbus, Ohio, where James Black was nominated as its presidential nominee.  In the 1872 Presidential Election the Prohibition Candidates received only 5,607 out of nearly 4.5 million cast.

The Prohibition Party  was the first to accept women as members, and woman's suffrage appeared on the Prohibition Party platform in 1872.  

Along with Neal Dow, Black created the  National Temperance Society Publishing House, which  printed over one billion pages of temperance literature in it's first 60 years of operation.  .

In 1880, Black wrote a booklet on the history of the Prohibition Party

You can see the entire document here:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/dcmsiabooks.briefhistoryofpr00blac/?sp=1

James Black died of pneumonia at age 70, more than 25 years before the Prohibition law of 1919 (which was repealed in 1933).  

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