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For most states, the repeal of prohibition meant a return to a state of legally drunken normalcy, but not so in Mississippi. The Magnolia State went dry over a decade before the nation, leaving bootleggers to establish political and financial holds they were unwilling to lose. For nearly sixty years, bootlegging flourished, and Mississippi became known as the "wettest dry state in the country." Law enforcement tried in vain to control crime that followed each empty bottle. Until statewide prohibition was finally repealed in 1966, illegal booze fueled a corrupt political machine that intimidated journalists who dared to speak against it and fixed juries that threatened its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 delivers an intimate look at the story of Mississippi's moonshine empire.

In the swamps and juke joints of Holmes County, Mississippi, Edward Tillman Branch built his empire. Tillman's clubs were legendary. Moonshine flowed as patrons enjoyed craps games and well-known blues acts. Across from his Goodman establishment, prostitutes in a trysting trailer entertained men, including the married Tillman himself. A threat to law enforcement and anyone who crossed his path, Branch rose from modest beginnings to become the ruler of a treacherous kingdom in the hills that became his own end. Author Janice Branch Tracy reveals the man behind the story and the path that led him to become what Honeyboy Edwards referred to in his autobiography as the "baddest white man in Mississippi."

In October 1965, nearly 800 young people attempted to march from their churches in Natchez to protest segregation, discrimination and mistreatment by white leaders and elements of the Ku Klux Klan. As they exited the churches, local authorities forced the would-be marchers onto buses and charged them with "parading without a permit," a local ordinance later ruled unconstitutional. For approximately 150 of these young men and women, this was only the beginning. They were taken to the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, where prison authorities subjected them to days of abuse, humiliation and punishment under horrific conditions. Most were African Americans in their teens and early twenties. Authors G. Mark LaFrancis, Robert Morgan and Darrell White reveal the injustice of this overlooked dramatic episode in civil rights history.