It was legal to sell alcoholic beverages in Ruston until a few years before the turn of the century (1900). When the parish voted to go dry, numerous “blind tigers” were set up, and old records state that “men who dared to oppose this evil influence put their lives in jeopardy.” Police Chief W.S. May and others led in their being stamped out but not before town marshal John Sizemore had been killed in the fight.