Florida’s Prohibition Governor

An aide once exclaimed to members of the press, "Florida Crackers have only three friends in this world: God Almighty, Sears Roebuck and Sidney Johnston Catts."

   Born on an Alabama plantation in 1863, Sidney Johnston Catts was named after a fallen Confederate general. In 1886, he became awakened by the spiritual and profitable side of the southern Baptist church. As a Born-again pastor, and a controversial figure in history, Catts increased his notoriety by taking advantage of the terrifying spike in racial violence during that decade. Once when a black man threatened him with a knife, Catts killed him with a shotgun blast. This act of violence did little to harm Catts’s political clout among white voters
   When Catts moved to the panhandle, the region was becoming consumed with prohibition, a movement deftly led by the Anti-Saloon League and Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Protestant preachers, and First lady Jennings.  Across Florida and the South, county by county, the drys were crushing the wets at the ballot box. It was an atmosphere that seemed tailor made for a Sidney Catts, and it didn’t take long for this outlandish man to make a stab in politics.
 
A political unknown (His Campaign ad featured on the right) in Florida, he campaigned for the office of governor by walking miles and miles covering Florida with a Bible in one hand and carrying a loaded revolver in the other. He often flamboyantly stood on a stump preaching a political sermon to his supporters while wiping sweat from his ruddy red face with a large handkerchief or cooling himself with a palmetto fan. It is said that he based his political truths on "Religion, Race, and Rum." That is he believed that winning elections in the south was all about traditional religious values, white’s fears about African Americans, and public appearance of being against liquor. As his personal and professional record would later reveal he was not a true believer and only used the movement as an opportunity for advancement.





 Legend has it that what sparked Catts interest in the Governorship was his discovery that once elected, the governor can live in the Executive mansion rent free. His campaign was historic for its use of both an automobile and a loudspeaker which he would use to travel extensively to rural areas. It was in this race that a form of campaigning now referred to as “Barn storming” was born. Catts’ major opponent in the Democratic Primary was state comptroller William Knotts. Catts won the Democratic ticket by a close margin, but Knotts challenged the win in court. Knowing that the courts would back Knotts against him, Catts took to the roads in his Model T in an attempt to turn the race into a populist revolt against the corrupt establishment of state government. The state supreme court ordered a recount and Catts lost by just a few votes.

Infuriated, Catts went to the Florida Prohibition Party leadership and requested their endorsement, which was given. Catts proceeded to trounce the regular Democratic candidate at the general election. On Election Day in 1916, Sidney Catts became the 22nd Governor of Florida with 43% of the vote and the remaining candidates dividing the rest. He was one of only two candidates from the Prohibition Party to ever obtain such a high position in government; the other was Charles Hiram Randall of California, who served in Congress 1915 to 1921. Despite this feat Catts was always a true Democrat


Sidney Catt’s Inauguration was the first ever recorded on film and Catts, a former Pastor, made sure that it was an eventful ceremony. His Inaugural address would layout an agenda that was both anti-Catholic and prejudice, claiming that Pope Benedict XV was secretly trying to take over Florida. The new Governor would later not attend his own Inauguration over his own fear that the punch would be spiked.   He was fine winning as a Prohibitionist candidate. Yet, the second he won, he returned to the Democrats. Despite being a stated defender of sobriety, he shocked many of his most diehard followers by supporting legalized gambling and, his administration was attacked with charges of counterfeiting. In fact during his single four year term, he did nearly nothing for the prohibitionist cause. When it looked like statewide prohibition was going to be a reality, only then did he put his full support behind it.  Once out of the Governor's mansion, Catts for a time established a short-lived business of making patent medicines, such as Catts' Hog Tonic, which was full of booze.
After many long years of battling each other it was the temperance forces that had won the day and the writing was clearly on the wall. Still the brewer and distillers were big business. They spent plenty on money to preserve their operations. Anheuser Busch helped bankroll the United Brewers Association to counter lobby legislators who had been brew beat by the anti-saloon league.  While their efforts may have proved far too little and much too late. The momentum was with a national repeal. Luckily for many brewery owners, they had an ace up their sleeve - smuggling.

Images from the New BOOK Rum Runners AND Moonshiners of Old Florida

Now available for purchase



https://www.amazon.com/Rum-Runners-Moonshiners-Old-Florida/dp/1729616313

    Florida is my Home. I was born in Hollywood, Florida, just a few miles away from the old hangouts of Capone, and where the mob moved its base of operations following the glory days of Prohibition. My father's family moved there in the 1970s after nearly a century in Brooklyn. If you google my last name you'll discover no winners of high office, no Nobel prizes for medicine, or famous inventors.  What you'll find is a bunch of swarthy people with olive skin from Sicily that helped create the Mafia and a sweet bread cake of the same name from Lucca, Italy.  Legend says it was created by one of my ancestors. Clearly, he was a modest person with a self-deprecating sense of humor because it’s a giant ring-shaped fruit cake.   When I was born my Mother’s father, Walt Young, was a member of the Florida House of Representatives for Pembroke Pines, and mom being an unabashed "Daddy's Girl" dragged me over the next ten years on a series of long car drives from Hollywood to Tallahassee where he would finally retired. This long state would wiz past me and my road dog mother would take me through the back-roads of 27 to save money on tolls. There I would see the real Florida of the 1940s and 1950s, the tourism traps that seemed to die out once Disney arrived.  It was on these car rides with Mom and sometimes with my Grandpa that I learned about Florida’s culture, and its character.

But it was settling down in the Florida Panhandle that opened my eyes to a completely different slice of Florida culture. Of course, I was living in Tallahassee, a liberal cultural citadel within the Panhandle. The real Panhandle or Old Florida as its sometime called is an intriguing mix-up of rural living and beach resorts, small-town living alongside precious outlets of nature, beach and forest. The vast and compelling settings of Florida's historic past that are happily not lost in its busy present and increasing modernization.

   I married a southern belle with many Florida Cracker virtues, who along with my in-laws quickly informed me that I was not a true Southerner, but a Yankee from Miami.  Over the past five years I have studied the history of Florida's forgotten frontier and its rural past. Throughout this journey many colorful figures have come into focus. This south Florida Yankee has become intrigued with the rebellious spirit of the Florida moonshiner and cracker rum-runner. The powerful, charming, forces of nature that made their illegal products in the region’s swamps so that the rural laborer and well-dressed big city flapper alike could happily consume it. The men that made so many moonlight journeys towards their river shakes to make the shine or race it across dense forests in stolen cars from quickly unloaded schooners.  The beach hoppers and well healed tourists who came here looking for rum and spirits, and were never disappointed. Each played their small part in one of the most compelling human dramas in the sunshine state’s outlandish history. 

One of the greatest parts about gathering some of the interviews and source material for this book was the good-natured enthusiasm from the people I encountered. It was truly marvelous the way each interview began to take on a similar pattern. I would usually start off with a local group, association, or in many cases a historical society. I would make a dry call to the main location and would usually be greeted by a very friendly volunteer, who upon hearing the subject of the book would laugh loudly. The median age on the other end of the phone calls was usually about 72. So clearly, I was speaking to someone who had first-hand knowledge. 

   I would, ask them if they had any knowledge or personal experiences that could be used in the book, and the other end of the phone would then stop laughing and like clockwork grow silent. If it was a man on the other end, a moment of brief reflection was all they needed, and then they were off to the races. Almost at once they would start up the narrative of their lives. Talking about their childhood, the community they grew up in, and the adults around them who had remote connections to bootlegging or moonshiners.  

   If it was a woman on the other end, they tended to need another round of probing. Regardless of county, city, gender, or race they were all natives to the panhandle or central regions of the state. Little by little, they enjoyed talking to me about the past and the wild activities of their neighbors. But, of course there was no mention about the possible involvement of their own families. They all had one final gatekeeper to prevent me, a stranger, from getting to the fruit.  The men wanted you to know that this was a very religious part of the country.

New Book Rumrunners and Moonshiners of Old Florida

 

The sheer number of moonshine stills in the area that could produce a lot of smoke depending on what was used to fuel the fire lends credence to those who say it was just a giant still operation. Even today hikers walking along the national forests in Wakulla don’t have to look hard to find the traces of the era’s hidden enterprise of bootlegging and moonshining. The old timers carry it with them like a badge of honor and proudly proclaim to anyone who asks that “Yes, their folks had a moonshiner.”
 
   Helen Strickland is the president of the Wakulla Historical Society and a lifelong resident of the region. Her family once owned a gas station in Wakulla, on a popular intersection. Her family would watch cars go by on the road and her parents could tell if the owners were shiners during the 1950s and 1960s. They would sometimes even shout out “There goes a shiner or a bootlegger.” Her parents could tell because often how the shiner’s cars were built seemed to give them away.  “Often their tires were just giant and if they had shine in the trunk it would just weight down the entire structure of the automobile. Just how it was seating you could tell they were going to make a run.”

 
According to Strickland, there were bootleggers everywhere in Wakulla and in the entire panhandle for that matter.  As a child growing up after prohibition Helen Strickland would take walks in the forests and rivers of the community and like relics of a bygone era, she would find the stills, jars, jugs, and even cooking locations. These old bootlegger trail pickups were commonplace. Old habits die hard in the Panhandle, as Helen noted in recalling a quick and cheap method the elderly would employ to get intoxicated. A tradition that stems from long before prohibition.
“Older people would also take corn cobs and hide them in clocks and allow them to ferment. Then after a while, like four or five months they would eat them.”
Apparently, they would just chew on these old cobs, sometimes all day long, and it was like having a continual glass of shine.

People who lived along the rivers during prohibition lived very modest and simple lives. They hunted for duck and fished for mullet and jack fish. They grew cotton, corn, or peanuts and grew their own fresh vegetables. They traded for what they could, and although on occasion they had to sadly part with their hard-earned cash, as John Schafer explains, the only real cash crop in the area was moonshine.
Stills along the swampland were regularly moved and removed, and people in the know would wear special badges or pins to identify themselves. If you operated a still you needed a pin. If you were going to take a look at a still or wanted to make a purchase, you had to wear a pin.

“Everyone it seems wore a badge,” said Jabot Williams a local shiner
“If you didn’t have a badge they would pull a gun on you, and there were a lot of shootings.”

To avoid detection when purchasing ingredients, still operators got creative, going to every other store in a community to buy one item here and another there to avoid suspicion. However, this tactic seldom ever worked because shiners would buy ten pounds of sugar at a time at these stores. Agents would track the increases in sugar sales per grocery store to determine if there were shiners in the area. When approaching their stills from the main roads, shiners would take a different path each time to not wear down a trail. If a still is left in one place for too long, it will certainly attract the attention of wild animals. Wild hogs, the police discovered, love sugar mash. So, they learned to track their swine friend’s paths in the wilderness. Likewise, the shiners learned to also trust the movements of the wild hogs. If they heard a hog nearby, they knew the agents weren’t far behind.

New Book Rum Runners and Moonshiners of Old Florida

Travel back to one of the most colorful and captivating periods of Florida history, a time when the rebellious spirit of Old Florida challenged the federal government. When Prohibition ended legal production of spirits and ordinary citizens turned to a life of crime. Robert Buccellato the author of Florida Governors: The lasting Legacies and Jimmy Carter in Plains, shines light on a forgotten time of bootlegged liquors, corrupt rural sheriffs, crafty moonshiners, and panhandle traditions that back centuries.

Rum Runners and Moonshiners of Old Florida

I'm so excited to present the official book cover to my new book "Rum Runners and Moonshiners of Old Florida"

Goes on sale the week of January 10th 2019.

Release date January 19th 2019 (The 100th Anniversary of the 18th amendment) 

Special thanks to my brilliant wife Stephanie