Sydney Curry- Honors Distillery Retreat Reflection Blog
On Saturday, September 13th, the day before my eighteenth birthday, we traveled from the gates of Spelman to the Uncle Nearest Distillery in Tennessee. Recognizing the tensions that exist within Love & Whiskey, I entered with the aim of embracing complexity and honoring multiple truths. Transparently, as we drove the two-hundred-plus miles to Tennessee, I was holding multiple emotions simultaneously: excitement for adulthood and grief for childhood. I was also balancing multiple feelings surrounding our travels to a more rural part of the South. As someone from the West Coast, I can candidly acknowledge that traveling through the South makes me uneasy. For me, the South is uncharted territory, and I am acutely aware of my lack of regional awareness. Upon entering the distillery, I immediately encountered images and narratives that held tension and that forced me to recognize the presence of multiple truths.
Historical Consciousness
Uncle Nearest’s Distillery reminded me of the complexity of history and legacy. While the space intends to highlight the legacy of Nearest Green, the first Black master distiller, and his relationship with Jack Daniel, those legacies come with complication. A friendship rooted in inequality is a “friendship” worth questioning–particularly one between a white man and a formerly enslaved Black man. The distillery attempts to laud their friendship; however, if truly was one, questions arise for me, specifically toward Green. I question his choice to stay on the plantation–or as the distillery refers to it, “the farm”-- to work with Jack Daniel. For the sake of the brand narrative, I wonder which parts of their stories were sweetened, distorted, or purposefully omitted–despite the distillery’s mission of restoring the erased. Through subtle juxtaposition, the physical space reflects nuance, from the symbolic wings painted outside to the bar area set just ahead of sacred stain glass windows to the positioning of the pictures of Ida B. Wells and Anne Dallas Dudley–women who fought for suffrage simultaneously but achieved it separately. Traveling to Tennessee from Atlanta shaped my thinking both while at the distillery and now as I reflect. The short distance between the two serves as a reminder of our proximity to stories like Green’s that were erased, uncovered, and redefined. Moreover, coming from Atlanta, “The Black Mecca” and Spelman, the top HBCU in the nation, there is a discernable difference between how the history of Black people is commemorated here, while still being in the South, versus in Tennessee.
Ethical Discernment
This question regarding ethical discernment and things that delight as they wound causes me to connect Love & Whiskey to “A Raisin in the Sun.” As we discussed in my Honors Composition class, there is a moral implication to selling alcohol. Whiskey, like other liquor, has the potential to wound communities while making those who sell it wealthy. While the distillery intends to repair the erasure of Nearest Green, it upholds a culture connected to community pain and destruction. As a result, the true benefit of the distillery must be weighed against the effect of the commodities’ wounds. From an alternative lens, if we consider the notion of Green and Daniel’s friendship to be dangerous, then the narratives that the distillery “sells,” as in promotes, are also something that delight as they wound.
Curated Inwardness
Stepping outside of the classroom into a setting like this creates opportunities for deeper understanding of texts. Stories like these are not confined to the pages they are written on. They elicit conversation and hinge upon being discussed in reference to the contemporary world. Having experienced the distillery alongside my honors sisters, this experience reminds me to embrace intellectual community even in my pursuit of intellectual sovereignty. Connecting again to “A Raisin in the Sun,” this experience reminds me to reject sentiments like George’s that see education as just “learn[ing] facts—to get grades—to pass the course—to get a degree” (Hansberry 98). In line with Benetha’s view, this experience was a reminder that true learning depends on critical thinking and reflection.
-Sydney Curry
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