As Jack Daniels celebrates its 150th anniversary, the manufacturers let the world in on a little secret about their distillery. Since its inception in the 1850s, the story of how the world-renowned Tenessee whiskey came to be has been that a young boy by the name of Jack Daniels went to work for a preacher, grocer and distiller by the name of Dan Call. He taught the young Daniels how to run his whiskey still and that’s how the story of the Jack Daniels brand began.
There’s only one problem with this story though, it leaves out Nearis Green, a slave.
Slaves were a big part of the whiskey business. Founding Father and former President, George Washington owned and operated one of the largest distilleries in the country at the time. Six slaves were an integral part of his operation. Like Nearis Green, they were distillers. However, Green may have been more than just one of Jack Daniels distillers. On tours of the Lynchburg, Tennessee distillery, social media and in marketing campaigns, the company now tells the story of Green teaching Daniels what he knew, not Call. Green was a slave of Dan Call and one year after the ratification of the 13th Amendment freeing slaves, Jack Daniels opened his distillery employing two of Greens sons.
So why was Green left out of the story for 150 years? As the company got closer to their anniversary they decided that they wanted to determine their origin and they stumbled upon the story of Nearis Green. Phil Epps, Global Brand Director for Jack Daniels insists that it wasn’t intentional to leave out the story of Green.
“I don’t think it was ever a conscious decision,” Epps told MSN. “As we dug in, we realized that it was something that we could be proud of.”
It’s no secret that over the years the demographic of Jack Daniels has changed. The company has started to attract millennials, who happen to be people of color. So was this about marketing or telling the truth about a 150 year old brand that was built with the direction and genius of a slave?
