When Jack Daniel’s Failed to Honor a Slave, an Author Rewrote History

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August 18, 2017

By: CLAY RISEN, New York Times

Credit Nathan Morgan for The New York Times

Lynchburg, TN – Fawn Weaver was on vacation in Singapore last summer when she first read about Nearest Green, the Tennessee slave who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey.

Green’s existence had long been an open secret, but in 2016 Brown-Forman, the company that owns the Jack Daniel Distillery here, made international headlines with its decision to finally embrace Green’s legacy and significantly change its tours to emphasize his role….

But when she got to Lynchburg, she found no trace of Green. “I went on three tours of the distillery, and nothing, not a mention of him,” she said.

[…]

Ms. Weaver dug in, determined to uncover more about Green and persuade Brown-Forman to follow through on its promise to recognize his role in creating America’s most famous whiskey.

[…]

Scouring archives in Tennessee, Georgia and Washington, D.C., she created a timeline of Green’s relationship with Daniel, showing how Green had not only taught the whiskey baron how to distill, but had also gone to work for him after the Civil War,…. the first black master distiller in America.

An original jug stencil from about 1879. Credit Nathan Morgan for The New York Times

By her count, she has collected 10,000 documents and artifacts related to Daniel and Green, much of which she has agreed to donate to the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

[…]

In a photo in Jack Daniel’s old office, Jack Daniel, with mustache and white hat, is shown at his distillery in Tennessee in the late 1800s. The man to his right could be Nearest Green, a slave who helped teach Jack Daniel how to make whiskey, or one of Green’s sons.

Green, already adept at distilling, took Daniel under his wing and, after the Civil War and the end of slavery, went to work for him in his fledgling whiskey operation.

Read full article here.

Read more on Green & Jack Daniel’s Distillery here.

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