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Baptists and Bootleggers

Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City.
New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection
/
Library of Congress
Interior of a crowded bar moments before midnight, June 30, 1919, when wartime prohibition went into effect New York City.

In her book, Baptists and Bootleggers: A Prohibition Expedition Through the South (2021, Evening Post Books) Kathryn Smith takes you to major cities and small towns, all of which struggled between the Baptists and their teetotaling allies who preached temperance and the bootleggers who got rich providing what their customers couldn’t buy legally.

Smith talks with Walter Edgar about her Prohibition expedition through hotels, bars, speakeasies, museums and cemeteries, and shares some vintage cocktail recipes she picked up along the way.

News and Music Stations: Fri, Feb 18, at 12 pm; Sat, Feb 19, at 7 am
News & Talk Stations: Friday, Feb 18, at 12 pm; Sun, Feb 20, at 4 pm

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Dr. Walter Edgar has two programs on South Carolina Public Radio: Walter Edgar's Journal, and South Carolina from A to Z. Dr. Edgar received his B.A. degree from Davidson College in 1965 and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in 1969. After two years in the army (including a tour of duty in Vietnam), he returned to USC as a post-doctoral fellow of the National Archives, assigned to the Papers of Henry Laurens.