Mississippi Moonshine Politics

How Bootleggers & the Law Kept a Dry State Soaked

Janice Branch Tracy

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781626197602
• eBook ISBN:
  9781625852885
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

A Mississippi historian chronicles the rise and fall of The Magnolia State's moonshine empire in this revealing true crime history.
 
For most states, the repeal of prohibition meant a return to legally drunken normalcy, but not so in Mississippi. The state had gone dry more than a decade before the rest of the nation. In that time, a lucrative black market for moonshine and bonded liquor became a way of life for many Mississippians. By the time Prohibition was lifted, bootleggers and state politicians were unwilling to give up their hold on the sale of alcohol. 
 
For nearly sixty years, Mississippi was known as the "wettest dry state in the country." Until statewide prohibition was finally repealed in 1966, illegal booze fueled a corrupt political machine that intimidated journalists who dared to speak against it and fixed juries that threatened its interests. Author and native Mississippian Janice Branch Tracy offers an intimate and authoritative look inside  Mississippi Moonshine Politics.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Citation
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Liquor, Religiosity and Dry Politics
• 2. Bootleggers, Alcohol Agents and Survival Economics
• 3. Trouble in Paradise
• 4. Durant, Mississippi: The Town That Wouldn’t Die
• 5. “Hell-Hole of the Delta”
• 6. Politics, Payola and Raids
• 7. The Black Market Tax
• 8. Mississippi Liquor Wholesalers
• 9. The Gold Coast of Rankin County
• 10. The Mississippi Gulf Coast
• 11. A Liquor Storm Brewing
• 12. It’s Legal—Now What?
• 13. Alcoholic Beverage Control
• Afterword
• Appendix I. 2013 Mississippi Code, Title 67—Alcoholic Beverages
• Appendix II. Liquor Lexicon
• Appendix III. Statistics Relating to Alcohol Production and Consumption
• Appendix IV. A Modern Take on “Local Option,” by Bill Minor
• Appendix V. Soggy Sweat’s Whiskey Speech
• Appendix VI. A Disturbing Suspicion, by Hodding Carter
• Bibliography
• About the Author