Jack Daniel and Slavery

[www.THUG.com]

I still do the knowing there is a place still called Lynchburg

My mom's from there and it's named after some white guy, John Lynch not THAT "lynch"

 

[Forlife44]

My mom's from there and it's named after some white guy, John Lynch not THAT "lynch"

Played for the bucs and broncos

 

[Hey_zeus]

I had some today too breh

It's so smooth breh.

 

[J-Nice]

LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Every year, about 275,000 people tour the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Lynchburg, and as they stroll through its brick buildings nestled in a tree-shaded hollow, they hear a story like this: In the 1850s, when Daniel was a boy, he went to work for a preacher, grocer and distiller named Dan Call. The preacher was a busy man, and when he saw promise in young Jack, he taught him how to run his whiskey still — and the rest is history.

This year is the 150th anniversary of Jack Daniel’s, and the distillery, home to one of the world’s best-selling whiskeys, is using the occasion to tell a different, more complicated tale. Daniel, the company now says, didn’t learn distilling from Dan Call, but from a man named Nearis Green, one of Call’s slaves.


This version of the story was never a secret, but it is one the distillery has only recently begun to embrace, tentatively, in some of its tours, and in a social-media and marketing campaign this summer.

They finally revealed this to the public because they felt it was the perfect time to make money off of the story. They'll have more people interested in Jack Daniel's and increased tourism to their distillery.

“It’s taken something like the anniversary for us to start to talk about ourselves,” said Nelson Eddy, Jack Daniel’s in-house historian.

What perfect time to talk about the story then your anniversary where increased prices for liquor will bring in more profits?

Frontier history is a gauzy and unreliable pursuit, and Nearis Green’s story — built on oral history and the thinnest of archival trails — may never be definitively proved. Still, the decision to tell it resonates far beyond this small city.

For years, the prevailing history of American whiskey has been framed as a lily-white affair, centered on German and Scots-Irish settlers who distilled their surplus grains into whiskey and sent it to far-off markets, eventually creating a $2.9 billion industry and a product equally beloved by Kentucky colonels and Brooklyn hipsters.

Frontier history is only "gauzy" and "unreliable" when it shows that blacks have made a significant contribution. Any other time, our contributions or innovations are reduced to myth and folklore. Blacks are part of the reason why the mystique of the frontier exists. Black cowboys, herdsmen, and others were significant in the forming of the frontier.

Left out of that account were men like Nearis Green. Slavery and whiskey, far from being two separate strands of Southern history, were inextricably entwined. Enslaved men not only made up the bulk of the distilling labor force, but they often played crucial skilled roles in the whiskey-making process. In the same way that white cookbook authors often appropriated recipes from their black cooks, white distillery owners took credit for the whiskey.

This has always been the case with America in regards to stealing black inventions and exploiting black talent. It's a documented fact that masters would give their slaves their freedom if they came up with inventions that were profitable.

Marketing tactic?

Of course this is. If there wasn't a marketing angle to make money off this story, it wouldn't have seen the light of day.

In deciding to talk about Green, Jack Daniel’s may be hoping to get ahead of a collision between the growing popularity of American whiskey among younger drinkers and a heightened awareness of the hidden racial politics behind America’s culinary heritage.

Some also see the move as a savvy marketing tactic. “When you look at the history of Jack Daniel’s, it’s gotten glossier over the years,” said Peter Krass, author of “Blood and Whiskey: The Life and Times of Jack Daniel.”

“In the 1980s, they aimed at yuppies. I could see them taking it to the next level, to millennials, who dig social-justice issues.”

This is the crux of it; Trivialize the suffering and exploitation of African Americans and make it marketable to privileged white people and social media SJW's for a profit.

These companies know that people aren't really interested in social change more than they are the attention they get from social media. Exploitation of African American bodies is as American as apple pie.

 

[mortuus est]

Blacks have done alot and dont get credit for it, i was reading about some southern style type of foods and one of the owners straight up said "yeah my great grand father took this style from the slaves from his town, but we made it popping tho "

 

[www.THUG.com]

Played for the bucs and broncos

Not that "John Lynch"

 

[Forlife44]

Not that "John Lynch"

 

[End Cruelty]

Um, yeah?

They don't have to be, though. They're taking it out of history textbooks. That's a little too sensitive. There is no good ol' USA without the backs of blacks. And other countries understand us better than we do ourselves. More transparency is a good thing.

 

[kuts]

They don't have to be, though. They're taking it out of history textbooks. That's a little too sensitive. There is no good ol' USA without the backs of blacks. And other countries understand us better than we do ourselves. More transparency is a good thing.

I have no problem with transparency and I agree that American black folks are sensitive (and sometimes too much so), but my point is that there is a reason for that and it is that the past can't stay the past.

Most black people who learn about the American history of slavery in school will initially try and distance themselves from it bc it changes one's perspective. And as you grow and interact with others you discover that the ghosts of the past still have a big influence on today. While plenty of millenials (myself included) decide early on to "get over" it, once that discrimination is in your face it's simply a jarring experience. Now the history of oppression mixed with the behavior of your elders make too much sense. And getting over it turns out to be an unaffordable luxury. I'd even go so far as to suggest that it is the role of black people to keep the sensitivity on high bc there is simply unresolved tension. Case in point, the "official story" wasnt disclosed to an American audience yet it was apparently disclosed to an audience abroad, which speaks to non-transpareny in action.

It's easy to be transparent when you can put time and distance against what may or may not be controversial topics. And American history is controversial by the simple fact that there is no resolution to its issues. The country is quite literally an embodiment of hypocrisy at times bc of this.

Cliques are gonna clique. People will always support their own over another group. Racism only matters bc of the real world consequences. If it were just name calling and people not messing with you then no one would care. But history has shown and continue to show that you have to move carefully and keep your ears open so you don't find yourself in a sticky situation. This doesn't apply so much to other people.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

the jack Daniels company should break his heirs a nice check off HIS recipe don't you think?!

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Makes you wonder how many of these corporations are truly built off black ingenuity..

5 Inventions by Enslaved Black Men Blocked by US Patent Office - Atlanta Black Star