Listen Southside Virginia: The Great Moonshine Conspiracy [Audio Documentary]

from UNC Libraries

Last year I wrote about The Wettest County in the World (Scribner, 2008), which follows Matt Bondurant's grandfather and two great-uncles as they made a living moonshining. It was a hard life for them: poverty was widespread in Franklin County in the 1930s, the effects of the Great War and of Spanish Influenza still weighed heavily on the community, and a drought made making an honest living almost impossible. To make matters worse, the local law enforcement kept a tight grip on the illegal liquor trade by charging high fees for protection from the feds. Going against them was a risk that the Bondurant Boys took - with dire consequences.

from Kirkus Reviews

A little over a year ago, Charles D. Thompson, Director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, wrote Spirits of Just Men: Mountaineers, Liquor Bosses, and Lawmen in the Moonshine Capital of the World. A new audio documentary, put out by Big Shed Media (with assistance from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College), uses Thompson's research to tell the story of how Franklin County got to that trial in 1935. The documentary puts it in a different light, from the perspective of people whose well-being depended on moonshine and who experienced the Great Moonshine Conspiracy of Franklin County firsthand (or secondhand from his grandparents in Thompson's case).

I heard The Great Moonshine Conspiracy last night on American Public Media's "The Story." Much of the fun of writing my post for Bondurant's novel last year was researching Franklin County's moonshining history (Franklin County is very proud of the legacy, carrying the title "Moonshine Capital of the World"). But I could never write anything as eloquent as this documentary, so I encourage you to set aside sixteen minutes to hear this fascinating piece of history.

from The Great Moonshine Conspiracy | Big Shed

---


Lawless, the movie version of Bondurant's The Wettest County in the World starring Shia LaBeouf and Jessica Chastain, has just been released with favorable reviews. See the trailer here.

Terri Fisher and Kirsten Sparenborg. Lost Communities of Virginia. Earlysville, VA: Albemarle Books, 2011.

From Virginia Tech News

Here is something that I will only say once, and if it weren’t for the eternal nature of blogs, I would deny ever uttering (writing) it from here on out. So all of you out there who bleed maroon and orange, listen up! Here it is: reading Lost Communities of Virginia made me wish that I had gone to Virginia Tech. If I had become a Hokie, I would have gotten involved in the Community Design Assistance Center and the Lost Communities of Virginia Project.

Alas, I didn’t. I went to the University of Virginia, where I got a phenomenal education in architectural history and where I got placed in my first job after college, Patrick County, probably my favorite place on the planet. So not going to VT wasn’t the worst decision of my life, but I am still pretty jealous of the Hokies who got to perform all of the research and write the beautiful book that is Lost Communities of Virginia.

In 2011, the CDAC put out a handsome publication compiling information about thirty of the 2,600 small communities that “[cover] the breadth of Virginia’s geography, history, and community types” (Lost Communities of Virginia Project). What makes these places unique? They have been lost to the hands of time.

Herman Melton. Southside Virginia, 1750-1950: Echoing Through History. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2006.

From Mitchells Publications.

Reading Herman Melton's latest book about Southside Virginia is almost like spending an afternoon with someone who experienced the events firsthand. You get a good overview of episodes in our history, but without the heavy, intricate details that often (but not always) weigh down those stories. These clips are valuable because Melton expounds upon occurrences that may be little known to most people.

Matt Bondurant. The Wettest County in the World. New York: Scribner, 2008.

 photo from UNC Libraries

These days, the fact that Franklin County, Virginia, was the “Moonshine Capital of the World” in the 1930s is more of a fun trivia tidbit than something at which to take pause. That's right, Southside's very own Franklin County - not Chicago or New York City - was the mecca for liquor during Prohibition. 

Locals see it as a significant part of our proud history. One can take the Franklin County Historical Society’s Moonshine Express Tour every April, buy knickknacks that tout this designation, and sing along to tunes that shout out specifically to Franklin County’s moonshine enterprise (my favorite: Jean Shepard’s Franklin County Moonshine). The Blue Ridge Institute and Museum at Ferrum College offers an extensive history of the trade in its online exhibit Moonshine – Blue Ridge Style: The History and Culture of Untaxed Liquor in the Mountains of Virginia. A simple Google search will yield results that point to hobbyists’ interest in this topic as well (try here or here), and every so often, larger media venues will also take an interest in it (see the History Channel’s Hillbilly and Rumrunners, Moonshiners, & Bootleggers, National Geographic’s Moonshine documentaries, and this “vintage” news story). Nearby Climax, Virginia, even held an annual Moonshiners Jamboree for a time.