The "Cornbread mafia" was the name for a group of Kentucky men who created the largest domestic marijuana production operation in United States history.
[2] The story was first reported in the Courier Journal Newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky on October 8, 1989, and then in 2012 in the narrative non-fiction book The Cornbread Mafia: A Homegrown Syndicate's Code Of Silence And The Biggest Marijuana Bust In American History (2012), by James Higdon.
[citation needed] In October 2022, author Joe Keith Bickett self-published his third book titled Cornbread Mafia, The Quest For Freedom, A Prisoner's Memoir.
[24] The most notable member of the Cornbread Mafia was Johnny Boone, arrested in 1987 as the ringleader of a marijuana operation in Minnesota, for which he served about 15 years in prison.
Author, Joe Keith Bickett was employed as law clerk/paralegal for Mr. George and worked as a legal aid for the attorneys on the Johnny Boone case.
[31] President Barack Obama granted clemency to three men from Marion County, Kentucky; all were either directly or indirectly connected to the Cornbread Mafia.
In November 2011, President Obama granted a pardon to Les Berry, an original member of the alleged "Cornbread Mafia," who was caught in Wisconsin driving a get-away car with six other Kentucky men fleeing a marijuana farm in Minnesota in late October 1987.
[32] In March 2015, President Obama commuted the prison sentences of 22 drug offenders, including Francis Darrell Hayden, a Marion County native.
[33] In December 2016, President Obama granted clemency to an additional 231 incarcerated people, including another man from Marion County: Aaron Glasscock.
"[34] For much of the 1980s, the Cornbread Mafia was reported upon by photojournalist Steve Lowery[35] of the Lebanon Enterprise, many of whose photographs are in Higdon's book.
[38] In a 2015 interview with Terry Gross, Graham Yost, the creator and show runner of the FX series Justified, said, "Honestly, we didn't know a lot about the Dixie Mafia.
Frankly, probably, we started with reading Wikipedia like anyone else..."[39] A series of unsolved murders in Bardstown, Kentucky have been incorrectly attributed to the Cornbread Mafia.
In April 2018, Nashville recording artist, Sweepy Walker, the grandson of beloved Grand Ole Opry legend Billy Walker released "Cornbread Mafia" - a feel-good, good-time bar song about local legends John Boone "them Bickett boys, and too many more to mention.
[41] In June 2018, singer/songwriter Tyler Childers held a benefit concert for Johnny Boone at Gravely Brewery in Louisville, telling an interviewer from the Louisville Eccentric Observer: "I read the book [‘Cornbread Mafia’] that Jim Higdon came out with, and I got some friends from over my way that were friends with Johnny — people that I hold in high regard, and people that hold him in high regard.
Mary Kutter, a country singer from Bardstown, Kentucky, teased a song clip about the Cornbread Mafia in early 2024.