[5] Agents would be tasked with eliminating illegal bootlegging rings, and became notorious in cities like New York and Chicago for raiding popular nightclubs.

Though part of the FBI on paper, J. Edgar Hoover, who wanted to avoid liquor enforcement and the taint of corruption that was attached to it, continued to operate it as a separate, autonomous agency in practice.

The first narcotics agent to lose his life in the line of duty was Charles Wood, fatally shot in the back after a two-hour gunfight following a whiskey raid in El Paso, Texas.

[35] Ness was overseen by the northwest district administrator, Malachi Harney, based out of the Chicago Prohibition Office.

They earned their nickname after members of the Chicago Outfit repeatedly failed to bribe or intimidate them, proving they were not as easily corrupted as other prohibition agents.

[37] In early 1922, Hopley was sworn in as a general agent, serving under Federal Prohibition Commissioner Roy A. Haynes.

[39] Frank Hamer was an American lawman and Texas Ranger who led the 1934 posse that tracked down and killed criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow.

[40] He participated in numerous raids and shootouts, and he was involved in a gun battle with smugglers on March 21 which resulted in the death of Prohibition Agent Ernest W.

[3] The two-agent team of Isidor "Izzy" Einstein and Moe Smith, working out of the New York City office, compiled the best arrest record in the history of the agency.

[45] Other famous lawmen who, at some point, carried a Prohi badge include James L. "Lone Wolf" Asher,[46] Chicagoan Pat Roche,[47] and Hannah Brigham.

[48] On September 9, 1927, Assistant Treasury Secretary Seymour Lowman issued the following statement to the world's press: "There are many incompetent, crooked men in the prohibition service.

"[49]The major obstacle faced by the Bureau was that the Volstead Act and the Prohibition of alcohol was widely unpopular, controversial, and divisive in American society.

[50] Despite their mandate to stop consumption of alcohol, many prohibition agents reportedly accepted bribes in exchange for ignoring illegal trade in liquor, which has been ascribed, in part, to their relatively low wages.

Some prohibition agents became notorious for killing innocent civilians and harassing minor bootleggers, while ignoring gangsters and their rich customers.

[35]: 69, 96–98 Temperance was often used as a smokescreen for many variations of bigotry to include xenophobia, white supremacism, nativism, anti-catholicism, eugenicism, and Manifest destiny.

[52] Their perception maintained an observation of the correlation that the target of their bigotry was an alcoholic; that many of the Catholic, Italian, Eastern European, and Irish immigrants to the United States were associated with public drunkenness.

[53] Many of the members of the Anti-Saloon League joined the new Ku Klux Klan with the influx of immigrants to America at the turn of the century, which took a vigilante militia role in prohibition enforcement; they would extrajudicially target those suspected of violating the Volstead Act.

[54] Certain speakeasies and hooch joints of the prohibition era were owned by black Americans searching for economic stability less than fifty years after the passage of the 15th Amendment, and have been called the birthplace of the jazz age.

[55] By the fact of their existence, these speakeasies were defying the law, and formed intimate business relationships with the bootleggers and gangsters that traded in illicit alcohol.

[56] The list of prominent black 'drys' (prohibitionists) includes Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Sojourner Truth, F.E.W.

No matter the relationship between black Americans and prohibition, this complicated the Bureau's ability to enforce the Volstead Act.