In 1788 the Free African Society of Philadelphia denied membership to liquor drinkers. Black sailmaker James Forten, Sr., backed by clerics Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, created a group to combat drunkenness in 1809. It joined the American Temperance Society and its campaigns in 1826.

Black women, ministers, and abolitionists formed temperance societies from Baltimore to Boston ca. 1829–33. They coalesced to instill values of sobriety, Christian morality, and racial respectability. Temperance became a priority of blacks’ Convention Movement (1830–1893). In the twentieth century African American churches promoted alcohol abstinence for blacks’ self-respect as well as to fight their high rate of diseases such as cirrhosis of the liver.