Tom Bullock

Tom Bullock (1872–1964) was an American bartender in the pre-Prohibition era. He was an African-American person. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 18, 1872, one of at least three children of Thomas Bullock, his father, a former slave who fought for the Union Army, according to US Census records. Bullock was a bartender at the Pendennis Club, the Kenton Club, on a railway car bar, and most notably the St. Louis Country Club, and is the first known African-American author to publish a cocktail manual, The Ideal Bartender. His book is notable as one of the last cocktail manuals published before Prohibition, providing a rare view onto pre-Prohibition cocktail recipes and drinking culture in America. Some writers believe that he appears to have ceased bartending with the onset of Prohibition; others believe that he continued to tend bar at the St. Louis Country Club or other private settings despite the legal prohibition.