Aniji Fox - Nearst Green Distillery Observation

In the Honors Program, reading does more than passively sit back and listen. It acts as a bridge into active engagement and leads to direct action. Our recent trip to the Uncle Nearest Distillery in Tennessee is an instance of when you implement this principle, putting on the page what you read and making your way out into the real world. Through this, along with our analysis of Fawn Weaver's Love & Whiskey, we saw where history, entrepreneurship, and ethics fit for life in hands-on, tangible ways.

Traveling from Atlanta to Shelbyville, Tennessee, the scenery became a powerful memory of centuries' bonds of connection to history. Visiting the Uncle Nearest Distillery gave us a chance to participate in historical events outside of the book. There, we learned the history of Nearest Green, the first known African-American master distiller as well as his significant role in creating Jack Daniel's whiskey. These actions had an immediacy that also illustrated a history that is largely ignored or obscured in written history. Standing where Nearest Green once stood left me with a deep immediacy to the details of Love & Whiskey and reminded me that history is better viewed more readily when you sit and put it back in perspective.

Visiting the distillery also challenged the moral assumptions we attach to success and entrepreneurship. How do we reconcile the fun from drinking whiskey with historical injuries related to making it? It is a question that invites us to question the responsibilities associated with being an entrepreneur. Fawn Weaver’s efforts in reorienting Nearest Green’s legacy show how entrepreneurship may elevate past business profits into a medium for addressing historical wrongs. As honors students, we are asked to reflect on these dimensions, the questions of when and how business in a social and historical context should be considered.

As a retreat, it was more than just a visit to a place; it was a stepping off our scholarly bubble to a bigger community and whole story. We were forced to reflect on our roles, not only as students and researchers, but also in history and history’s future. That change of scene was welcome. It pushed us to see ourselves from the larger cloth of stories — from Nearest Green to a more general African-American story  and what we might bring. Experience is invaluable, and those experiences turn an abstract knowledge into a personal light, forcing us to view one’s studies against lived experiences.

Our reflections ranged over more than Love & Whiskey; beyond what we read, other things such as Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration and Robin D.G. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams. These texts together provided a more comprehensive articulation of action that is informed by history, and a commitment to social justice. Through their insights, we grasped better the essence of informed engagement with the world and recognized our retreat as a microcosm of the larger movement, where reading meets reality and you look at it in a fresh way and we commit to act on that.

In conclusion, the Uncle Nearest retreat proved to be a holistic learning experience which supported Honors Program as students learn through reading as a core practice. It reminded us of the importance of directly confronting history and tapping into our common reflections to reconstitute our role but also our purpose in relation to the bigger story of society.

Aniji Fox

Class of 2029