Nathan “Nearest” Green, who taught Jack Daniel how to distill, is being honored through a new foundation — the Nearest Green Foundation. According to the website, the foundation has a wonderful do-goodery purpose:
“Nearest Green’s triumph over his original circumstances was remarkable and his journey from slavery to one of the wealthiest African-Americans in the area was as much about his spirit of forgiveness and grace as it was about his legacy of excellence.
“It is that legacy the Nearest Green Foundation strives to uphold and share with the world. Somehow, some way, Nearest Green’s legacy was once forgotten. Now, we look at it as our responsibility to make sure that never happens again.”
The foundation also has a scholarship for Green descendants who want to attend college. And on the one hand, this is great. We should know who Nearest Green was. He should get proper credit.
But “somehow, some way?” Isn’t there a moment when we can just be honest about this? The “somehow, some way” is racism. It was racism from the second Green’s enslaver decided he should own black people and then owned Green through to that enslaver telling Green to teach his skills as a distiller to Jack Daniel through Jack Daniel using the skills Green taught him without making him a partner in the business through to the company downplaying, ignoring, and then forgetting Green’s role even as they kept employing Green’s descendants.
Not every instance is the worst kind of racism. That Jack Daniel employed Green and his family, and that Green had wealth from working with Daniel during Reconstruction is much better than we could hope to expect from a white man of that era.
But the truth remains that the Motlows — Jack Daniel’s heirs — have a college named after them, and Green’s descendants now, only now, have a scholarship that lets them go to college. And even then, only if they “maintain a 3.0 GPA throughout their time in college (Nearest’s legacy of excellence demands at least that).”
You think every Motlow has to prove themselves to get their share of the family legacy? I’m sure there’s one or two of them who were C students, and no one told them they couldn’t go to college if they wanted to.
I don’t think there’s justice to be had in this situation. Nearest Green gave Jack Daniel the skills to make Daniel’s family very, very wealthy. And due to deep societal racism, all he got in return was a job. And the saddest part about it is that he was lucky to get that. It speaks highly of Daniel that he ensured Green had an income.
Jack Daniel’s isn’t going to go back and cut the Green family in on their fair share of the profits their ancestor’s talent made possible. Even if Jack Daniel’s locally wanted to do that, I have a hard time believing Brown-Forman and its shareholders would be on board with that. And this, what’s happening now with the foundation and the pending park and Jack Daniel’s willingness to acknowledge and incorporate Green’s story, it is a good thing. It’s something that should be happening and that we can all be proud of.
But it says Jack Daniel’s on the bottle of the most recognizable brand of whiskey in the world, and it doesn’t say Nearest Green’s name, and it never has. And it’s too late to give Nearest Green the chance to see what he could do with his own recipe and his own distilling skills. This wrong can’t be made completely right.
