America is Nothing Without Black People

You can't run from history, I wont let you

FLHC11/Alamy Photo

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I still remember the first time I heard the story of Jack Daniels Origin, It was a classic New York City summer. The streets were full of opportunities, people, and energy, the temperature was moderately high, and the humidity was thicker than cold grits. After spending the first half of the day trying to drum up support for a local candidate, I joined some colleagues at a bar for after work drinks. The mood was light as we exchanged war stories from our canvassing adventures; it was one of those evenings you wanted to last forever. Among the things that came up during our whirlwind conversations was preferred liquor.

While most of the group in attendance were avid tequila drinkers, I was in a small minority of whiskey lovers. This difference in spirits soon turned into a playful debate where we made arguments for what the better liquor was, and it wasn’t long before I was getting dragged for bragging about the benefits of Jack Daniels. As far as I was concerned, the best cocktail you could order from any bar was a Jack Daniels on the rocks with a splash of ginger-ale. This revelation was met with confusion and derision. However, in my defense, up until that point, my experience with liquor was Hennessy, Ciroc, Easy Jesus, and more Hennessy. The bartender saw me fighting for my life and suggested a different brand, Uncle Nearest.

Before I say more about my favorite whiskey, I would first like to tell you about the man, Nathan Nearest Green. Born in 1820, Nearest came of age in a country where slavery was the law of the land. And in that country he was considered property. Owned by a company called, Landis and Green, Nearest became so well-known in Tennessee for his distillery skills, his owners would rent him out to other plantations and farmers eager to take advantage of his ability to make delicious whiskey. It was through this that Nearest was introduced to a young man named Jasper “Jack” Daniels. When they met, Jasper was a young boy struggling to survive and hungry to learn. Dan Call, the owner of the plantation renting out Nearest, and who had hired Jasper as a laborer, introduced the two and told Nathan to teach Jasper “everything he knew.” That relationship grew and Nearest soon became his mentor. Jasper took these skills and after perfecting them, became well known as having the best whiskey in the state. He used that notoriety to make enough money to buy Dans plantation and turn it into a distillery named after his-self. And that is the story of how Jack Daniels got it’s start.

Since then, Jack Daniels has become a multi-billion dollar company, and as of 2022 is considered one of the most valuable spirits brands in the world with a value of $7.17 billion dollars. There should be no doubt that without the tutelage of Nathan Nearest Green, the world may have never known about Jasper Jack Daniels, and this industry titan might have never existed. But until 2017, very few people knew his name or his contribution to one of the most recognizable spirits. We could go down a rabbit hole trying to figure out why that is, but the better question to ask is, how many other institutions and success stories can we trace back to slavery? The answer is quite a few.

I bring this up today because in the last few weeks, there has been an uptick of argument from those on the right questioning the impact of enslaved people on America’s rise to power. They will agree that “some parts?” of slavery was wrong, but that Slavery did not make America great, and that African Americans did not build this country, they would be wrong.

No matter what corner you turn, the fingerprints of Black American enslaved people are all over this country. Take for example New York Life, known as one of the most successful Life insurance companies in the United States, and considered a staple of stability in an economic environment that is always shifting. Despite what we may know or feel about it today, it once could credit a huge chunk of its profits (up to 30%) to the insurance policies it had on enslaved people. But it wasn’t just New York Life, according to an article from the NY times that tells the story of the insurance companies ties to slavery, Aetna, and US Life also found profits in insuring enslaved people. According to the author of this article, Rachel L. Swarns,

“Alive, slaves were among a white man’s most prized assets. Dead, they were considered virtually worthless. Life insurance changed that calculus, allowing slave owners to recoup three-quarters of a slave’s value in the event of an untimely death.”

While selling policies on enslaved people didn’t bring in the returns the company hoped for, it helped them to establish relationships in the south which eventually benefited the growth of the company. We can argue about the profitability of the efforts, but New York Life's investment in this type of policy shows another example of how deep slavery impacted every inch of this country. When historians try to do an estimate, they believe that at its peak, slave labor was valued at around $4 Billion dollars. Adjusted for inflation today that would be a value of 13 trillion dollars. Without the financial power, intellectual property, emotional, spiritual and physical labor that the United States took from enslaved Black people, this country would not be where it is. That is an uncomfortable truth for a lot of people, it seems especially so for those in power.

That is why as we speak the Trump administration is trying to sanitize the Smithsonian Museum of African American History, he believes that the institution focuses “too much on the negative,” it’s why Republicans, and right-wing influencers want you to believe that DEI and Racial Equity are “tools for attacking white people,” It’s why a grown man can hop on X and claim that “it’s debatable whether slavery made America an economic super power” because if we actually had to have an honest conversation about who built this country, and who made it great, some people’s glass houses would be shattered, and rightfully so.

Our country is no longer on a collision course with facism, we are here, and as many of us sit by in shock as our rights are slowly eroded, it can feel like there is nothing we can do, and that may be true in the case of policies, or even election results. But one of the markers of a fascist government is an attempt to erase history, we must not let that happen! When all of this is said and done, all we will have are our stories, they tell us where we come from, who we have been, and how we can be better, and if America is to have any type of future, one thing everyone must remember is that this country is nothing without Black people.