Alcohol and Drugs History Society

White Liquor and Red Clay (moonshine and NASCAR)

For a discussion of the forthcoming (February 2010) book by Dr. Dan Pierce, White Liquor and Red Clay: NASCAR in the Time of Big Bill Franz, see here.  The article does not mention the publisher; the book's title may be inexact.

"Hoochland": memories of Dubuque-area bootleggers and moonshiners

For memories of resistance to Prohibition in Dubuque-area, Iowa (and East Dubuque, Illinois), see here.

Moonshine in Georgia (web article)

For a web article on moonshine in Georgia, with bibliography, by University of Georgia historian Bruce E. Stewart, see here.

Tennessee moonshiner (book)

Bruce E. Stewart, King of the moonshiners: Lewis R. Redmond in fact and fiction (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2008). Redmond lived 1854-1906.

Prohibition home distilling in Minnesota

this article is based on an interview with a 98-year-old woman who made and sold home distilled whiskey. The article has an appendix giving other information about drink in the state, in part based on an unpublished paper (1977) by Margaret Murray, available at the Minnesota Historical Society.

Moonshine-style liquor in North Carolina

USA Today, 24 May 2007, reports that at age 76 former moonshine bootlegger Junior Johnson is prormoting moonshine-style whiskey called "Junior Johnson's Midnight Moon Carolina Moonshine." Johnson also is famous as an early NASCAR race driver. Many southern bootleggers, familar with driving fast cars during the Prohibition era, went on to be pioneer drivers for NASCAR.

Illicit booze kills 10 in Iran holy city

Ten people have died after drinking homemade hooch in a holy city in Iran, where the consumption of all alcohol is banned, the Kayhan newspaper reported on Sunday.  Read more here.

Moonshine whiskey and NASCAR stock car racing (book)

Neal Thompson, Driving with the Devil: Southern Moonshine, Detroit Wheels, and the Birth of NASCAR (Crown, 2006). NASCAR stock car racing had its origins during the 1930s (and earlier during state and national Prohibition) when moonshine runners in their fast Ford V-8s transported untaxed corn whiskey to market from southern Appalachian stills. For instance, Lloyd Seay, who was NASCAR race champion in 1941, was killed in a quarrel among rival bootleggers.

Moonshiners in Western North Carolina, 1865-76 (Article)

Bruce E. Stewart, "Attacking 'Red-Legged Grasshoppers': Moonshiners, Violence, and the Politics of Federal Liquor Taxation in Western North Carolina, 1865-1876," Appalachian Journal 32/1 (2004): 26-48.

'It don't take a genius to make it'

They were a couple of East Tennessee boys caught decades ago with moonshine. Then President Bush put them in the spotlight this week by pardoning their crimes.

"It was the biggest relief I ever had," Carl E. Cantrell, 57, of Monteagle said in an interview about his pardon...The other Tennessean granted a pardon is Charles E. McKinley, 75, of Pall Mall.

While pleased, he said, there's a reason he is not overly happy at the president's news. "I've got a wife here with two arms broke, so I can't celebrate too much. She fell about 42, 43 days ago," McKinley said.

The presidential pardons restore full U.S. citizenship to the men, including the rights to vote and to buy a gun, their attorneys said. But their records will reflect both the felony convictions and the pardons.

Read more at MSNBC.