Kaitlyn Chiles' First Blog Post: Uncle Nearest - A Legacy & It's Ties to the Future

 Reading Fawn Weaver’s Love & Whiskey had already prepared me to think about the relationship between Nearest Green, the first known African American master distiller, and Jack Daniel, the man whose name would later define an entire whiskey brand. However, visiting the Uncle Nearest Distillery in person was an experience that reading alone could never fully replicate. Walking the physical grounds where history and storytelling intertwine made me realize not only how legacy feels different when it’s embodied in a space, but also just how significant the impact of it is not only just in the lives of its descendants, but how it can change the lives of anyone who comes into contact with its story. Traveling from Atlanta to Tennessee made the events of the book truly come alive, and reminded me that these were not abstract, imaginary events in a novel, but real lived histories shaped by the land, labor, and memory. Being there and bearing witness to the artifacts of friendship, slavery, and entrepreneurship emphasized how these stories remain relevant within the present, and can be used as inspiration to propel us forward towards futures that would have been hard to imagine for those in the past. I thought of Danielle Allen’s Our Declaration, where she insists that the promise of equality is never finished, but instead must be continually re-claimed and re-framed, and standing in this distillery, I felt the real power of that statement and the unfinished and untold hidden legacy of America’s history in a brand new way.

At the same time, the visit challenged me ethically. Fawn Weaver’s vision of telling a “love story” between Nearest Green, his descendents, and Jack Daniel is a beautiful testament to the real power of friendship in all aspects of life, but it is also complicated and riddled with tension. Whiskey is a delight in many different aspects,  but its history is tied with pain—enslaved labor,racial inequality, and legacies of exclusion. This tension raised hard questions for me: when does entrepreneurship turn into a responsibility? What does it mean to profit from a history that is so intertwined with pain? Robin D.G. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams came to mind here; he pushes us to imagine a reality beyond survival and instead toward liberation and the freedom to transform society. The Uncle Nearest story feels like a step in that direction, as it worked to restore a Black man’s rightful place in American history and uncover the hidden truth of whiskey making in America—but I also couldn’t help but wonder if this commercialization risks softening the harder truths. Of course, there are two sides to every coin, and as I walked through the distillery, I couldn’t help but think of the harsh realities that would have riddled Uncle Nearest’s life both as an enslaved person and as a hardworking African American man in the 1800s. Tennessee soil bore the steps of Nearest Green and countless others whose names we may never even know, and walking through there as an honors student made me feel part of a larger story, not just of African American resilience, but of how communities choose to remember and retell the legacies of their ancestors and use it to reshape the future. Thus, for me, our retreat became less about observing the distillery and more about discerning who we want to be as learners, leaders, and future professionals. 

For me, this trip reshaped what it means to belong to the Honors Program. It is not only about academic excellence; it is about cultivating the courage to hold and change contradictions, to ask difficult questions, and to imagine better futures in a world that constantly tries to dim our light as Black women. In that sense, the retreat was not just about Uncle Nearest but also about us—how we carry history forward, how we discern responsibility within entrepreneurship, and how we situate ourselves in a community of intellectual curiosity. In the end, the Uncle Nearest Distillery left me with a powerful point. History is never neat. To honor legacy is to carry and grapple with tension. And as students of honors, our work is to live in that space honestly, discerning not only what happened in the past, but also how that shapes what stories we will choose to tell in the future.

- Kaitlyn Chiles, C'O 2029