A formal portrait of Mahalia Mullins sits in her cabin.
Some say moonshiner Mahalia Collins Mullins once beat 30 men in a wrestling match and sold them all whisky afterward. Others say she was so large that when police tried to arrest her, they couldn’t get her through the door. By the time Mullins passed away, her story was known from coast to coast, and into Canada and Mexico. The headlines? “Not too Big for Death.” “Famous Moonshiner Dead, Defied Law Officers from a Mountain Top.”
In East Tennessee, legendary moonshiners like Popcorn Sutton loom large in the imagination, rebellious and wild, driving fast and shooting faster, and almost always white and male. But Mullins was different. As with many old stories, much of Mullins’s origins are shrouded in legend, and for every one story about her life, there are two more.