22. Southern Illinois’ Hillbilly Bootlegger Crime Wave
Charlie Birger, born Schachna Itzik Birger to a Jewish family in Russia, settled in a coal mining region in rural Southern Illinois in 1913. It was a “dry” part of the state, but local rules did not eliminate drinkers’ thirst. Birger was not above making money through crime, so he forged an alliance between hill people who manufactured booze in illicit stills and the miners who drank it, and set up shop as a small-time bootlegger and pimp.
National Prohibition arrived in 1920, and Birger graduated from a two-bit bootlegger to a major one, with a network that stretched from Florida to the Canadian border. A ruthless operator, he crushed the local Ku Klux Klan – not out of altruism, but because they impeded his bootlegging operations. Whatever his motives, crushing the KKK made Birger a local hero, until things went haywire when he fell out with his business partners. The result was a crime wave that engulfed Southern Illinois, and a conflict that was fought with homemade tanks and aerial bombings.
Also Read: The Daily Life of a Bootlegger During Prohibition.