Right now, it's time for the Way Black History Fact. In Today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored by Underground Beach Club From the Streets to the Beach. For the latest in beachwear, visit Underground Beach Club dot com. I'm gonna share from history dot com. This is not my opinion, this is history dot com. So and dig it up with them Jack Daniels. For those of you who like to get faded. Jack Daniel stands as one of the most iconic American brands and the most popular spirits in
the world. Yet, while the whiskey and its founder have become dominant names in American liquor, lord, the person perhaps most responsible for its success, an enslaved man named Nathan Nearest Green, who taught Jack Daniel the art of whiskey distillation, went unacknowledged for more than one hundred and fifty years. Researchers are discovering that the role enslaved people played in America's early whiskey making went beyond manual labor like gathering
grain and building barrels. Distillation was a no te, curiously laborious and tedious work, and some plantation owners, including George Washington and Andrew Jackson used enslaved workers to run their distilleries.
According to American spirit writer Fred Minnick, author of Bourbon, The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of an American Whiskey Brokers, at auctions of enslaved people, folk would notaate distiller trained slaves, many of whom previously worked on the Caribbean sugarcane plantations and contributed to the distillation of sugar's byproduct molasses to create run These skill sets earned premiums for their owners
and made them attractive to buyers. Overall, However, documentation of enslaved workers' contributions to early American whiskey production remained sparse, as few enslavers saw fit to credit their achievements for posterity. Little is known about Green's early years, beyond that he was born in Maryland in eighteen twenty. It's not clear, for instance, if he was born into bondage or was
enslaved later in life. What is clear is that by the mid eighteen hundreds, Green had gained renown as a skillful whiskey distiller in Lincoln County, Tennessee, so much so that, as in slavers, the Landis and Green Company often rented Green out to area farms and plantations, eager to partake in his whisky making skills. It was in this capacity that Green met young jasper Jack Daniel and forged what
would become an iconic partnership. Green taught Daniel sugar maple charcoal filtering, known today as the Lincoln County Process, a universally accepted critical step in the making of Tennessee whiskey. With this process, whiskey is filtered through wooden charcoal chips before being placed in casks for aging, a technique food historians believe was inspired by similar charcoal filtering techniques used
to purify water and foods in West Africa. The process imparted a unique smoothness of flavor that set Jack Daniel's whiskey apart from his competitors. As years passed, Daniel continued to learn from Green, building friendship with his mentor and eventually perfecting the Lincoln County process and selling his whiskey
throughout Lynchburg and surrounding towns. Lynchburg Gang all Right. By the time the Civil War began, Daniel had developed into an adept salesman, pedaling a smooth brand of Tennessee whiskey to soldiers and cementing his varietal as the most popular in the area. Once the war ended an emancipation came, Daniel bought Calls Distillery, renaming it after himself. Shortly after, Daniel opened a larger distillery on a nearby plot of Landberg.
Green's sons, Louis, Eli and George also began work. Their employment began a tradition of more than seven generations of the Green family working either with or for the Jack Daniels brand. So another one of those stories that you know we're gonna spend the second part of the show talking about Black history and Black History Month, and for those that can't stick around, at least this gives you an idea of why we think that's important.