What is "woman's christian temperance union"

Woman's Christian Temperance Union \Woman's Christian Temperance Union\ An association of women formed in the United States in 1874, for the advancement of temperance by organizing preventive, educational, evangelistic, social, and legal work. It is also known as the Women's Christian Temperance Union and by its acronym WCTU or W.C.T.U.. It was one of the political forces leading to passage of the constitutional amendment, later repealed, which prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages.

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) is an active temperance organization that was among the first organizations of women devoted to social reform with a program that "linked the religious and the secular through concerted and far-reaching reform strategies based on applied Christianity." It was influential in the temperance movement, and supported the 18th Amendment.

The WCTU was originally organized on December 23, 1873, in Hillsboro, Ohio, and officially declared at a national convention in Cleveland, Ohio in 1874. It operated at an international level and in the context of religion and reform, including missionary work as well as matters of social reform such as suffrage. Two years after its founding, the American WCTU sponsored an international conference at which the International Women's Christian Temperance Union was formed.