1920s and 30s America, When We Were Censored and Prohibited For Our Own Safety

"The first week of December 1933 will go down in history for two repeals, that of Prohibition and that of the legal compulsion for squeamishness in literature. It is not inconceivable that these two have been closely interlinked in the recent past, and that sex repressions found vent in intemperance. At any rate, we may now imbibe freely of the contents of bottles and forthright books. It may well be that in the future the repeal of the sex taboo in letters will prove to be of greater importance. Perhaps the intolerance which closed our distilleries was the intolerance which decreed that basic human functions had to be treated in books in a furtive, leering, roundabout manner. Happily, both of these have now been repudiated." (Morris L. Ernst, New York, December, 11, 1933 on Judge John Woolsey's decision to lift the U.S. ban upon James Joyce's Ulysses)